The Silence of War
It took Harry and Ginny a while to reconnect after the war was over, and once they did neither completely settled into the relationship, the scars and silence of war getting in the way. When a simple argument causes Ginny to walk out of Harry's life, will he be able to open himself up to let her back in? Can he convince himself that the fight is over and let her rid his life of the silence that war brings?
Harry had let the silence linger after the argument, and before he knew it it had seeped into the walls and foundations of Grimmauld Place and into his bones, settling there like a resilient ghost. Ginny never broke the silence, didn't sweep it out in the way she usually did with his demons. That was his punishment, Harry supposed; he'd made his bed and now he had to lie in it. He began to doubt that he'd ever rid his home of the persistent silence.
The issue was that Harry hated silence, detested it's connotations because they were never peaceful nor amicable. Silence came before the storm and it returned when it was all over - a chilling foreboding became the constant reminder of everything lost. Harry had learnt that from the war, and when the war was over his life had turned into a constant avoidance of the endless silence that muted everything.
The second wizarding war had been chaotic and confusing and unpredictable, but reliably noisy. The only noise Harry had known his entire life had been the sounds of war. The childhood of tiresome demands from the Dursleys, the little rebellion he could gain through his outbursts of magic, which would in turn gain him a beating from Vernon. Going to Hogwarts had been a relief and a renewal of war all at once. He had found himself at home in the Castle, but it was also there that his parent's murderer found him, and there were a new war began for him. The clamour of war had increased with age, everything around him growing more and more perilous and threatening. All Harry could do was adapt to it as he always had. He'd never known silence before, so why should it have bothered him to be surrounded by the noise of war? Even in their little tent in the middle of nowhere there was never silence, either Ron's radio or Hermione's theorising filling the air, with the inside of Harry's head a constant distraction because he just couldn't stop. Unsurprisingly, the Battle of Hogwarts had been deafening, the cries and curses reaching a crescendo that made their way into Harry's dreams at every possible opportunity. They were a constant reminder of the silence that followed war, and the silence he now faced.
When it was all over and death had released Harry back into the world, silence had settled over his life like a blanket: a heavy, suffocating blanket that had no edge. For a year Harry had fumbled against it, aimlessly fighting the urge to scream and hex the sun out of the sky just to alleviate the emptiness surrounding him and within him. Then tentatively, Ginny had reached out to him, her gentle but brazen and growing presence like a balm to the constant ache he hadn't known he'd been carrying around. His name on her lips caused a buzz in him, a background of white noise that was finally familiar and released the tension in his muscles. Her laughter roared in his ears and it felt like he could breathe again for the first time since he'd visited the empty, sparkling clean King's Cross. Ginny Weasley, as everyone who'd fought alongside her during that torturous year at Hogwarts knew, was fire and sparks that threatened a blaze at any moment. She was the rolling dark grey clouds that toed the line of becoming a thunderstorm, and the omnipresent watchful eye of a deadly tiger stalking its prey. She would do whatever it took, regardless of the cost, and that was a hard thing to ignore in a girl so young.
But Harry heard her laugh and saw the golden light in her eyes and the easy cutting remarks on the tip of her tongue and recognised something so incredible and loud alongside the danger.
Fortunately for Ginny, Harry needed both sides of her. The side that had walked his footsteps and knew the suffering that lay in silence; but also the side of sarcastic lines and easy laughter that he wanted to escape into.
Ginny looked at Harry and saw not the boy who lived, but a man who grasped his wand too tightly sometimes, like he was just itching to throw a curse. She watched the uneasy tension in his shoulders that never relented, and a mouth hardened by loss that rarely allowed itself to slip into a smile. She saw all the nightmares in the dark circles under his eyes and the awkward talk he used to fill the silence and her heart stuttered in its rhythm because she knew it all. Ginny knew behind the brooding stance and the year of panic that he just wasn't going to survive the quiet, was a boy who just wanted to escape the silence that followed a storm.
Fortunately for Harry, Ginny was an expert at making noise, and she needed him just as much as he needed her. Someone who understood the pressure of sacrifices made to protect, the weight of inflicting harm and the necessity in it. Someone who needed the escape.
For a few months they'd grown into each other, grown dependent and yet independent in their bond. They were both terrified they were causing the other harm, that instead of healing they were just prolonging the suffering. It was only after the argument that the silence and suffering they'd thought they'd escaped wormed its way back into their lives. Ginny and Harry didn't fight, or at least they hadn't fought before. They bickered and teased and disagreed but never fought. It terrified them how easily they'd slipped from a clash over how often Ginny stayed at Grimmauld Place, to a fight over Harry's survival guilt.
Harry had been worried Ginny was neglecting her family by spending so much time with him. Ginny had calmly claimed that her family saw her just enough, and that if he was so worried he could grace them with his presence at a Sunday dinner at the Burrow. He always managed to avoid those, pleading work commitments and extra training. Ron, still in training with Harry (though he wouldn't see it through for much longer) never seemed to have those same commitments. Harry of course, had tried to enforce those excuses again and again, but Ginny had reached a boiling point and she was no longer going to let him isolate himself without at least understanding the reason for it. When he'd refused to divulge from his justification of auror duties which was plainly a lie, Ginny had left. She'd learnt long ago that you couldn't pry secrets out of people if they weren't willing to let them go. The Carrows had tried to pry secrets out of her and it had been fruitless, she wasn't going to waste her time on a hopeless cause. Harry would speak when he was ready, and until then they returned to suffering in the silence they'd helped each other escape.
Harry bared the silence for two weeks, burying himself in the extra training and experience that he'd attempted to use as an excuse in an attempt to distract himself. But no matter how many cases he took on or aurors he volunteered to help for, nothing stir the silence that he was suffocating in. Fourteen days after Ginny had marched out of his life Harry turned up at the Harpies' training facility, disillusioned so that the journalists also waiting there for the practice to finish wouldn't recognise him, but not enough so that Ginny would fail to recognise him. He stood with his back pressed against a wall opposite the facility's exit, his arms crossed in a brooding position which exerted an unwillingness to be noticed and a certain degree of trouble. Ginny didn't fail to spot him when she exited the doors with a couple of her teammates, her eyes finding him immediately, and her body tensing at his own standoffishness. She said a hasty goodbye to her teammates, and made her way over to him whilst eying the press waringly. They paid no attention to her, she was still working her way up the ranks, and had come on to the second string team through tryouts, not through being sold from another team (as this was her first job), so she was of little interest. Yet.
"Can I buy you a coffee?" Harry had asked tensely, skipping the formalities, all too aware of the strained atmosphere between them. She'd simply nodded, letting him lead her to a nearby wizarding cafe. He tried to fill the air with awkward small talk, but Ginny had never been one for exchanging meaningless pleasantries before, and she wasn't about to start now just to ease his nerves, so the conversation remained very one-sided. They sat in the cafe together, both huddled over their hot drinks in another pressing silence.
"Why did you come?" Ginny asked finally, and Harry almost closed his eyes to relish in the sound of her voice, finally clear and rolling out into the air soothingly. If only it hadn't been in those circumstances, Harry thought, the atmosphere not having relented yet.
"I wanted to talk," He murmured vaguely, before clearing his throat and reiterating when she looked unimpressed by his response. "To apologise." This clarification received him little in the way of sympathy from Ginny, and he watched as her eyebrows rose in surprise and then settled in discomfort like the frown on her face.
"I was hoping that you'd worked it out by now." She sighed, leaning back against the chair and regarding him in disappointment. She hadn't touched her mug. Now Harry frowned, her words coming out like a strange alien language. He'd prepared this for a week, working out what to say to smooth things over, to buy him some more time to figure some way to hide the guilt he couldn't hide from her. But like always, she was smarter than him, and somehow he was missing something crucial that she could see so plainly. Ginny glanced around, her eyes narrowing at the excitable servers behind the till who seemed to have picked up on the fact that Harry Potter was in their cafe. He thought she almost smiled at him before she spoke, but she was smarter and angrier than that, he must've imagined it.
"Your disillusionment charm has faded." She stated factually, and his hand rubbed through his hair self-consciously. No matter how often he had to use them to avoid being spotted, he had never quite mastered them. "Let's go back to your place." She said softly, almost pityingly, and Harry looked up at her in surprise, taken aback that she would want to do that. He'd purposely chosen somewhere public to do this, so she hadn't felt like he was cornering her into talking. Public places you could escape from easily, Grimmauld Place was protected with a multitude of security charms, it was harder to leave quickly. He wasn't about to argue though, Ginny wasn't someone to make decisions that she'd regret, and they abandoned their coffees for the outside world. On the pavement she grasped his arm firmly, taking him by surprise again. He'd thought by now he would've grown used to her confidence and ease around him. But he found he almost liked being surprised by her, it reminded him just how incredible she was. With a quick glance around to make sure there were no muggles watching, Harry turned on his heel and they apparated.
The crack echoed loudly in their ears, but Harry's meticulous security wards ensured that it couldn't be heard, nor could they been seen from anywhere other than the grey doorstep he'd landed them on. Wards and security charms Harry was good at, his skittishness and experience with people threatening his life leaving him overly aware of the necessary protections. Bill had taught him the basics, and when he'd learnt the standard charms through auror training, he went back to Bill, feigning simple interest in the more complex charms. He was interested, but he attempted to convince Bill that he was interested from a purely educational perspective. Bill saw right through it of course, Harry was pretty awful at fooling people, but Bill had reckoned that if anyone deserved to get taught this stuff it was Harry. It had been a while since he'd gotten to teach anyone the rarer and intricate charms and curses he was paid to break apart, and in Harry he found an eager and genuinely interested student, so he'd indulged him. Vainly, Bill had attempted to convince Harry to become a curse-breaker, because he honestly had a talent for it. Harry had just laughed and took his new knowledge home to implement; he wasn't ready yet to leave the world of wars and death eaters, the Auror department was where he was destined.
Few people beside Harry were charmed to be allowed into Grimmauld Place, Ginny amongst them. She didn't release his arm as he unlocked the old black door, and only did when they were inside and she felt the need to take her coat off. It wasn't only Harry who had been lonely in the past week, she had suffered in her own silence as well and the need to be close to him was stronger than she'd anticipated. She led the way into the kitchen, flopping onto the sofa, her legs curled under her. Harry took a seat in the old armchair across from her, disappointingly far Ginny noted, but he was wary of the boundaries the past week had put in place, and he couldn't risk invoking any more anger. So he played it safe and sat far away.
"You didn't need to apologise." She said finally, breaking the silence that had filled his home for a week, forcing it to slip away from around them like a cold shell. Harry relaxed into the armchair, both relieved and baffled. What did she want from him then?
"I wanted to." He replied, not letting his gaze break from hers, all the sincerity and remorse he felt pouring into her.
"What for?" She asked, cocking her head to the side as if she was genuinely perplexed by the origins of his apology. Harry frowned, believing that it was so obvious.
"For arguing, for letting you leave, for not being more attentive." Ginny let out a disgruntled noise, burying her face in her hands at his missguided and evasive attempt at smoothing over their disagreement. She almost wanted to laugh at how ridiculous he was.
"Couples argue Harry. It happens, and I'd thought we were mature enough to see that and move on." She huffed through her hands, unable to look at him because she knew she might just end up pulling her hair out of her head in frustration.
"Why did you leave then?" Harry asked quickly with a frustrated frown on his face, He immediately regretted his harsh tone, and bit his tongue so he couldn't ruin this any further. He was so scared she was going to walk out again, terrified what it might do to him if she left just once more. But Ginny sighed in relief, her head coming up from her hands and smiling softly at him, because finally he wasn't treading on eggshells around him. He was trying to understand.
"Because you were lying to me, and thought that I was naive enough to believe it." She responded, voice flat despite the renewal of hope in her brown eyes. He shook his head immediately, instinctual because he had never, ever thought that she was naive. If anything he had been the naive one, becoming comfortable in their relationship and beginning to take her for granted.
"I never thought you were naive." He hissed, words strong and emphatic at the idea of him thinking so little of her.
"Then why blatantly lie to me for months?" She asked softly in an attempt to disguise her own frustration with him. Her fingers played with the necklace he'd gotten her after three months distractedly, a habit she'd picked up over the last two weeks. It was a tiny sunflower in the middle of a plain chain, like the ones in the meadow behind the Burrow. Ginny looked away from him, like the reminder of his lies were too much to handle. Harry opened his mouth to speak, but she interrupted before he could protest. "And please don't try to lie again Harry. I'm- I'm not sure I could survive that." He closed his mouth, his own hands twisting in the material of his flannel shirt distractedly as he watched her. She still didn't look at him, but the sitting room was small enough that he could see the flush of her cheeks from the heat of the fireplace which he'd lit when they came in. There was rarely a moment where he wasn't in awe of her, of how he'd ended up with someone so bewitching and strong, a million times stronger than himself.
"I can't go to the Burrow." He whispered, the truth spilling out of him now. He couldn't risk it anymore, losing Ginny, or causing her pain. It wasn't worth the temporary bliss the lies got him. She eyed him cautiously, her face softening when she saw the vulnerability in the nervous set of his jaw and recognised the truth in his words. "I can't see your family, it hurts enough seeing Ron, and Molly when she barges her way into here." He smiled fondly, unable to stop it at the thought of Ginny's overbearingly caring mother.
"What do you mean it hurts?" She murmured. Everything about her was soft now, the apprehension on her face, the warm glow of her skin against the firelight, the acceptance in her voice that made Harry just want to crawl into her arms and ignore the rest of the world. But he couldn't, she deserved better than that. She deserved the truth. So he swallowed nervously and continued.
"The guilt." He whispered, the tremble in his voice giving away the weakening strength he'd been attempting to hide. "I just can't walk in there, knowing…..knowing that one of you is missing. Because that's on me." Ginny stiffened, and Harry immediately regretted opening up. It wasn't a good idea. If he couldn't handle Fred's death, how could Ginny handle it.
"The war wasn't about you, Harry." She said eventually, but her voice was cold and her eyes felt like daggers piercing through him. "We all knew what we were fighting for, Fred too. He didn't die for you."
Harry shook his head, regretting everything. Not only had he made himself sound like a prick, but he'd insulted Fred's legacy in the process. This was why he couldn't go to the Burrow, he couldn't get people to understand why he was overcome by guilt.
"That wasn't- that wasn't what I meant." He groaned, rubbing a hand across his forehead in frustration as he tried to articulate what he needed to say, He remembered Ron and Remus' bitter words, their cold reminders and awakenings that the war wasn't about him, people weren't risking their lives for him. They were fighting for their own freedom, and Harry was just another part of the war. He either had to accept that or get out of the way and let others take up his position. No one had time for guilty parties. "I got over that feeling a long time ago." He remembered being a part of the Order, the feeling when they'd marched into the hall behind him when he'd faced Snape, the feeling of not being alone.
"Then where is all the guilt coming from?" Ginny asked, her voice almost pleading in an attempt to understand what was going on inside his head, inside his heart. He struggled to understand that himself, but for her he would try.
"Fifth year, when the Order took us in," He began, swallowing nervously as he tried to explain from where he felt the guilt had started. "that was when the war began to feel like everyone's war, not just this personal vendetta that Voldemort had against me." Ginny's eyes were a warm presence on his face, and he looked up from where he had been studying his hands to meet them. He suddenly felt that she was too far away, that he should have sat on the sofa with her after all. "But that meant that other people were involved, that everyone else was in danger as well. I could handle my life being in danger, I had control over that, because if I died that was on me, and that was okay." Ginny wanted to protest, to point out how much it wouldn't have been okay. But she kept quiet, knowing if she interrupted now Harry might never finish. "But other people risking their lives…..that wasn't something I had control over. It felt like the war had suddenly evolved into this huge, complex conspiracy in which everyone was involved without warning; it was no longer just Ron, Hermione and I against Tom. And then your Dad got hurt, and was so nearly killed, and that felt like that was on me. Like I could have stopped it."
"You did." Ginny pointed out, unable to contain her objection, her voice barely a whisper. Harry shook his head.
"But not quickly enough." He murmured, the image of himself as Nagini launching at Arthur Weasley, his face bloody and weak, imprinted in his mind at all times. "When Sirius….." He broke off, unable to finish the sentence. He squeezed his eyes shut, Mr Weasley's bloody face replaced with Sirius's serene one as he drifted through the veil, something much more painful and difficult to accept. "That, that was on me." He said strongly, so sure of his words because the same thought had been running through his head since he'd lost his godfather. Ginny had begun to understand, Harry knew these deaths and injures weren't his fault, but he felt entirely responsible for them.
"There wasn't another way he would have wanted to go." Ginny murmured, and Harry's eyes darted up to hers, intrigued and slightly offended. It was the first time someone hadn't tried to tell him that Sirius' death wasn't his fault. "He loved you too much. For Sirius, protecting you with his life, it was….it was fitting."
Harry let her words ring in the air, processing them. It was probably true, Harry and Remus, alongside Andromeda, had been the only true family Sirius had left. He wasn't even sure he'd ever gone to see his similarly disowned cousin before his death. So dying whilst protecting Harry, would that have been an unbearable way to go for Sirius? Ginny remained silent, her concession for him to continue.
"After that, everything just kept escalating, and it felt like I had no control over anything." He murmured, voice soft but unsteady as he spilled himself out to Ginny. "People kept getting hurt, or worse, and no matter what I did I could never fix anything fast enough and I just felt so…...responsible." Ginny nodded, as if this out of all his madness actually made sense to her. Harry wondered why he'd kept this all from her, when deep down he knew she was the one who understood him most.
"So I retreated into the woods with Ron and Hermione, because there, I'd hoped, I could keep everyone else safe." He paused. "If I disappeared, maybe, just maybe, people would stop getting hurt."
Ginny froze, remembering the Carrows taunts between crucios, trying to pry the knowledge out of her. "Where is he?" They'd hissed, tightening the ropes around her wrists, binding her to the chair as she dry heaved whenever the pain relented. She hadn't known, but she didn't tell them that. It wouldn't have changed anything. When it eventually became clear that she was not going to tell them what they wanted, they let her slide back into the busy corridors. She'd walked, head held high though her feet stumbled more than once, the bruises on her face and wrists reminders that she was stronger than they were, they they hadn't been able to break her. Back in the Gryffindor common room she hadn't allowed herself to collapse, not even when Nevil's eyes widened and then hardened, not when the Patil's enclosed her in a hug, not even when McGonagall's face went pale the next day at the sight of her. No, Ginny only allowed herself to collapse once she'd locked herself in the bathroom and cast silencing charms. Only then, where no one else could see her, did she cry.
But Harry knew none of this, she'd been careful to keep her secrets, in the same way he had his. No one really knew what he, Ron and Hermione had done in those months when they'd disappeared, what it was that had caused the climax of the Battle of Hogwarts. It was wrapped up in secret meetings with Kingsley and whispers left behind by Dumbledore. Ron had once told her that it was for everyone's safety that these things remained a secret, so as to not encourage more dark wizards. Ginny couldn't help but think that secrets were what had started it all in the first pla.
"You let Ron and Hermione in." Ginny observed, leaving her secrets for another day. One day they might be ready to completely reveal themselves to each other. Harry smiled in embarrassment, and her heart wrenched.
"Couldn't shake the idiots." He said fondly. "And Ron helpfully reminded me that we wouldn't last a day without Hermione. Probably true." Ginny allowed herself a smile, revelling in the fact that Harry, at least, hadn't been alone in those hard months. Harry looked at her in delight, and she recomposed her face, reminding herself that they weren't finished yet. He continued.
"But eventually we had to come back, and our arrival in Hogwarts just did even more damage." He murmured, his face sullen and morose at the memories.
"The Battle needed to happen. By the time you got the Castle we were at boiling point, with or without you there was going to be a fight." Ginny murmured, attempting consolation. "I don't know why, but that day you said needed to be in Hogwarts, and the war needed to end. Everything was going to climax at some point, at least there we had the vantage point."
"Did we?" Harry asked brazenly, and Ginny saw something of the terrified boy in the Chamber in the green of his eyes, muddy but shining in the firelight. "I'm not sure we ever had the vantage point. That place was just as much Tom's home as it was ours."
"Harry, I think you're forgetting that we won the war." Ginny reminded him gently, her legs almost carrying her over to him. She wanted so much to pull him into her arms and let this all be water under the bridge. But he still had some explaining to do. "Riddle's gone."
"Sometimes, I find it hard to believe that it's really over." Harry murmured, his hair falling softly in front of his eyes. He didn't move to brush it away.
"So do I." Ginny echoed, her eyes glazing over as she remembered the eternal fear and uncertainty that had taken so long to dissipate. In moments of stillness she still felt it today. Harry looked at her in understanding. He often forgot that everyone else had memories of the war to deal with, but there had always been something hauntingly familiar in Ginny's watchful eye when the war was over that he never forget she'd fought too.
"I don't know how to live outside of war." Harry finally admitted, his confession ringing in the air. It was so very silent as Ginny regarded him carefully, and he explained further just to fill it. "I was born into the first wizarding war, though I don't remember that early on really. My parents went into hiding once I was born to keep Riddle from finding me, but he killed them and I survived, and I was tossed into the hands of my aunt and uncle." Ginny kept her face still despite this revelation of new information. She desperately wanted to know why Voldemort had gone after Harry specifically, and when he was only a baby. But that was not a question for now. Across from her harry smirked bitterly, the memories of his legal guardians rarely did anything but fill him with a melancholic anger. "I was constantly at war with them, surviving on the little food they would relinquish to me, anticipating the next beating, my magic causing accidents that made my Aunt slap me." He turned his wand over in his fingers, the familiarity of it calming him mildly.
"Then I went to Hogwarts, and just when I thought I'd escaped it all, when I finally felt free and safe for the first time in my life, Tom found me." He admitted grimly. No one saw this side of him, he was careful to keep the bitterness and anger curbed through the auror training sessions and duels which he always won. But Ginny was sitting in front of him, wanting to hear it all, and he found himself unable to stop pouring it all out. "So that was that, the war I'd been born into restarting when I was eleven, and for four years it felt like my war, my fight, my responsibility."
"So when other people started getting hurt, when others were killed, you felt like that was on you." Ginny summarised softly, her tone compassionate but unyielding. Harry nodded slowly.
"It started with Cedric, and then it never stopped." The bitterness was overflowing out of him, he spoke through gritted teeth, and Ginny watched as his grip tightened on his wand. How he'd never snapped it was beyond her. "Cedric, and Sirius, Professor Burbage, Hedwig, Moody, Scrimgeour, Dobby, Fred, Remus, Tonks, Lavender, Colin." His eyes flickered up to her dangerously, his mouth set in a hard line and his eyes ablaze. "Do you know how many names I have imprinted in my brain, how many people's deaths I'm responsible for?" He roared, unable to control himself now as he let the anger seep through him in waves. The names washed through Ginny in powerful waves, each one attached to the memory of a person she'd known. She continued to listen to him as motionlessly as she could, ignoring her instinct to run out of the room at the recollections.
"Harry, you need to calm down." She attempted to ease his temper, all too aware of how easily curses came to him now and how little he needed his wand to cast them. Harry's nostrils flared as the volume of his voice rose.
"Why not be angry? Anger is better than tears, better than grief, better than the guilt." He roared, rising to his feet and stalking so close to her that she could see the flare in his nostrils. She could see why people were terrified of him, why he gave off an aura of discontent and danger that made people so sure he was the Chosen One. She'd never been on this end of him before, but he'd been through too much not to be seized by fury every now and then. Her eyes flickered up to the scar on his forehead. It was easy for her to forget who he was and the weight he carried on his shoulders; Ginny knew him better as the boy who took his tea with sugar and milk but his coffee black, and had read 'Quidditch through the Ages' four times. She remained silent, knowing no words were going to calm him, he just needed a moment. It took him a few seconds, but eventually the set in his jaw relaxed and he looked away, he stuffed his wand in his pocket and ran his hand through his hair again. She'd heard that was a habit of his father. He looked tired, Ginny noticed, weary of the guilt that he'd admitted to. He walked back to his armchair, sitting down in it carefully, and playing with the fringing on the edge distractedly.
"Just," Harry sighed, closing his eyes and composing himself, before opening his eyes and staring at her directly. She was slightly taken back by the directness in the way he looked at her, as if he were finally letting himself go, letting her all in. She relished in it. "I can't walk into your house knowing Fred's gone because I feel responsible for his death. I feel responsible for all their deaths and it feels like the entire world has gone silent without them."
Harry couldn't look up, couldn't bare to see the shame and horror on her face as she realised he truly was the monster everyone had been whispering about for years. They'd come so far as well, he'd allowed himself to sink into the comfort of her affection and care, and for the first time in his life he'd begun to feel like there might be an end to his own internal war in sight. An end to the war he'd been fighting within for his entire life. His self-pitying thoughts were interrupted by the sound of creaking, and he looked up expecting to see Ginny walking out. Instead he was shocked to see her getting up off of the ancient sofa, and walking towards him. He watched her in surprise, all too aware of the notoriousness of her own hexes. But her expression was soft and it had been so long since they'd been close, properly close, so he let her approach without showing how wary he was. She stopped when her thighs were touching his knees, and he sucked in a breath at the little contact. She rendered him useless, or maybe that's just what safety felt like, he thought to himself. He wasn't used to it. With little time for him to process what was happening, she climbed into his lap, her bum settling between his legs and her own legs hanging off of one of the chair's arms. Instinctively, he wrapped an arm around her back, his other laying across her hips as her arms threaded themselves around his neck. He sighed into her, his forehead listing forward to rest on her shoulder. She smelled of leather quidditch gear and mud and sweat but he only tightened his grip on her, grateful for the familiarity.
"You and your bloody hero complex." She murmured into his cheek, her lips brushing it softly as one her hands made its way comfortingly into his hair. This was all so familiar, their ease in fitting together and the soft sound of her voice pricked tears in his eyes. She pressed a kiss to his jaw, her warmth settling into him as he closed his eyes against the tears. But he didn't attempt to stop their fall, because with her he felt safe to let it all go. With her he found that he wanted to let it all go. So he sobbed ugly tears of grief and guilt into her shoulder and she let him, stroking soothing patterns across the top of his back. He gasped out "I'm sorry" between the tears, and neither of them knew if he was apologising for the deaths or him soaking her harpies fleece. They were both content to let is stay that way.
Eventually, Harry had no more tears left to cry, and he was left feeling slightly lighter and a slightly abashed. Ginny just continued to stroke her patterns across his shoulders.
"We all feel guilty." Ginny murmured when they'd lapsed into minutes of quietness. Not silence, never silence again because as long as they had each other's heartbeats to hold on to there would never experience the hollowness that silence brang. "Last year, there were so many kids who we didn't get to in time, before the Carrows made them disappear. Iit was always a team effort hiding those kids," She licked her lips nervously, relenting some of her own secrets for him as well. "but somehow everytime we failed, it always felt like that was on me, like it was my fault and that above all they were my responsibility to keep safe."
"You sacrificed more." Harry observed, looking up at her finally. They hadn't spoken much about the year the Carrows had ruled Hogwarts, and he knew she hadn't spoken to anyone but those who were there with her about it. Even her brothers and parents were in the dark about what she had gone through and done. When asked, she gave the vague response that she did what she had to, and no one had pushed her yet because everyone was terrified of what she might reveal. The answer she gave was true, but it was an awfully heavy statement for someone so young. Harry had little idea of what she'd endured to keep herself and everyone else safe, the ways in which she'd fought, and despite the ache inside of him to know the pain she was in, he respected the need to leave it that way until she was ready.
"Maybe." She answered carefully, their eyes meeting as they shared their guilt. "But it's not about that. It's about us recognising that we did everything we could;" Her words were strong, and her hands moved up on either side of his neck to implore him. "Tell me there wasn't a moment where you didn't fight with everything you had, tell me you wouldn't have given up your own life in an instant to save even one of those people you just listed."
Harry remained silent, unable to tell her that he hadn't fought with his heart and soul, that there hadn't been a million moments where he'd wished he could just give himself up to Voldemort, and that would free everyone else. It just wasn't true. Harry had committed his life to the war, there hadn't been an ounce of energy he hadn't given to it. He knew it had been the same for her.
"Is that what keeps you going?" He asked tenderly, one of his hands playing with the ends of her hair. It almost blended into the fire itself, a fitting image for a brazen and fiery girl.
"Partly," She murmured, allowing her forehead to list forward so it was touching his. He tightened his arms around her, one hand gripping her thigh in the fear that if he let go she might disappear. It wasn't a fear Harry was unfamiliar with. "But mostly it's the knowledge that life goes on, because otherwise what was the point of everything?"
During the war, especially over that last year where every move they made was life or death and every choice was lined with risk, Harry had never allowed himself to think ahead to better times. He couldn't get his hopes up that it might all be over because in his eyes that had been a naive hope and weakness. Most of the time he hadn't been able to imagine that there would come a time where everything would be over, even though that was what everyone else was fighting for. Fury had kept him going. But Ginny's fight had been fuelled by hope and the longing for freedom; for pure life. Hope was something Harry needed to learn.
"Why do you put up with me?" Harry whispered suddenly, taking in her words and realizing with an overpowering sense of certainty that he felt like he was still living in a warzone. Ginny's hand were gentle on his skin, one brushing a black lock out of his eyes, whilst the other stayed pressed to his neck. She could feel his pulse there, strong and steady. Just another reminder that they were alive and life went on. A smile danced across her lips, amused by his own self-deprecation because if only he could see himself through everyone else's eyes, then he might see that it was all worth it.
"Ah, that's probably got something to do with the fact that I'm in love with you."
They'd never said that before to each other, both longing to, but their desire was outweighed by their terror that it would scare the other of. Neither of them had exactly been role models for commitment. But the words fell from Ginny's lips so easily that she couldn't even regret them, all she could do was wait for Harry's response or flight.
Harry froze when she spoke, her declaration exploding in his ears so sweetly and unexpectedly that he didn't know what to do with himself. Fortunately, he didn't have to think about doing anything, because in the same natural way that she'd spoken, he instinctively responded.
"I love you too." It was barely a whisper, but in Ginny's head his words echoed like the sound of something she'd been waiting for, magnified by his enrapturing gaze. Green met brown and both felt complete, the week of suffering in silence over and nothing would ever be so quiet again because nothing could dampen the sound of their love. Harry closed the gap between them, capturing her lips tenderly and slowly, pouring everything he couldn't say with words into the kiss. Ginny pulled him closer, wanting to feel that he was really there and that this time, he wasn't going anywhere.
Eventually they pulled away, both breathing heavily and grinning in the way that young people in love do.
"Better late than never Potter." Ginny laughed, stretching her arms which were around his neck and settling deeper into his embrace. He huffed, his nose grazing her cheek as he tipped her chin up for another kiss. She indulged him, both melting into each other in front of the fire.
"Don't flatter yourself Gin, you've been holding back too." He murmured as he pressed kisses down her neck and she arched up to give him better access. She smiled knowingly and just threaded her hand through his.
It would take them hours to move from that armchair, not yet used to having each other so securely close and promised. But they were certain now, life was moving on and never would they be plagued with the silence of war and loneliness again.
What did you think? I always enjoy writing one-shots between Ginny and Harry, and this was no exception.
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