In the Years After Chapter 1, a harry potter fanfic

There was too much pain. Too much hurt in one place. Too much to feel. Harry needed to get away, and so he left. He broke up with Ginny, of course. It was hard to tell what he really felt anymore, with this great grief inside him, slowly consuming him, and he didn't want to waste any more of her time.

"I'm sorry," he said one last time. "But I can't stay here any longer." And he turned his back and walked away, leaving her silent and fuming. She didn't understand. Maybe someday she would, but right now she couldn't understand his need for space, distance—and time. Maybe a month, maybe a year, maybe a lifetime. Time to heal. Time to leave the pain and the cruel everyday reminders behind.

He packed away his magic money and pulled out the non-magic, paper stuff. He took a flight to America (the first time he had ever rode in an airplane), to a random city he'd picked in the middle of southern Ohio, put away his wand and faced the muggle world.

He'd arranged for a stereotypical office job, in some government department. He was sure he could handle it—he'd been shuffling papers at the Ministry, it'd just be different papers this time.

He knew now, as hindsight is twenty-twenty, that he should have broken up with Ginny sooner. They'd dated for two years after the war. The first year, they'd needed each other desperately. Ginny had lost her brother, and they'd both lost friends, mentors—but after that first year, Harry could tell that Ginny was slowly packing up her grief, storing it in neat little boxes in the corners of her mind and focusing on living again.

Seeing her healing should have made him happy. Instead, it sent him into a tailspin.

He tried to hide it. He tried to be good. For her. For the world. For the Daily Prophet, for the Ministry job he had been training to take for years, for the Weasleys, for Ron and Hermione, for the memory of his parents.

It was Hermione who finally convinced him to leave. She walked him home from work one day in August, ducking out of the Ministry offices they were interning at five minutes early. Harry always left his shift five minutes early. Hermione always left fifteen minutes late. But today she followed him out, and Harry accepted her presence with a nod and they trod the streets of London together in silence.

Hermione followed him up the stairwell to his flat, and he wondered vaguely if she was going to come in and stay for a bit.

"You want to come in?" He asked as they reached his door. "I can make tea."

"No, no," she mumbled, waving her hand. "I don't want to get in your and Ginny's way."

Harry refrained from reminding her that they didn't live together, and he hadn't seen Ginny in a few days.

"Okay, well," Harry muttered, eyeing her one more time before turning to open the door. "I'll see you around," he finished awkwardly, then chastised himself silently. This shouldn't be awkward. This was Hermione. But they hadn't spoken in over a week, and they hadn't had a real conversation in months.

"I wanted to talk to you," Hermione blurted out.

"Okay." He turned back and waited for her to speak.

"I—" she stopped and huffed a breath, eyes shifting left and right but never quite meeting his. "I'm going away," she said finally.

"Oh," Harry said. "That's good, I suppose."

"No, I mean, I'm going away for a while. I'm moving away."

"Oh." He blinked. "Why? Where to? Is Ron going with you?"

She gave a slight, almost derisive laugh. "No," she said, "no, Ron wanted us to move in together. You know, he just blurted it out, while we were standing in line at a sandwich shop. No tact, I swear. I mean, one minute I was thinking about what type of bread I wanted and the next thing I know, the boyfriend I've been dating for years wants us to move in together. And that's the moment I realized."

She fell silent, eyes downcast.

"Realized what?"

She glanced up, her eyes focusing sharply again, as if she had forgotten he was there. "I realized that I couldn't keep living my life for him. I couldn't keep living for Ron, or the Weasleys, or for you, or for being 'the brightest witch of my age' or 'one of the Golden Trio'. So I decided it was time for me to leave. I need to figure out who I am, Harry. Who I am outside of the Golden Trio and our years at Hogwarts and defeating Voldemort. So I told him I'd been planning on going away, and we'd have to put it off for a bit. He didn't like it, but we agreed we'd do long distance."

"Where will you go?"

"Australia. My parents moved back a few months ago. I'd like to be near them."

"How long?"

"A few months. A year?" she stated, but it came out sounding like a question.

They fell silent again. It felt as if another hole was opening up inside of him, feelings draining away to be replaced with fear. He wasn't sure what he would do without Hermione.

"I think you should go away, too." The words were quiet, and for a long moment they hung heavily in the air between them. "I know we've grown apart, and I haven't given you advice in ages, but that's my two cents."

Harry looked at her for several long moments, unsure how to respond. Finally, the words so quiet they were almost indistinct— "where would I go?"

Hermione looked at him, a far-away look in her eyes. "Away," she said simply.

They spoke for several more minutes—or to be more accurate, they stood in silence together, occasionally punctuated with words—until Hermione pulled him in for a tight hug. "I'll understand if you don't write, Harry. But I'll keep sending letters. I love you."

"I love you," he whispered back, and then she stumbled down the steps and he let himself into his flat and settled heavily onto his second-hand sofa and wondered how angry Ginny would be when she told him.

…..

She didn't yell, and that was almost worse. She just stared at him.

"Why?"

"I'm sorry," he said.

"No, really, why?" she repeated. "Why are you doing this now?"

"Because I didn't—I don't, because—" he stopped. "I don't know, and I'm sorry. You are amazing Ginny, and I love you, but my entire life was focused on the endgame of defeating Voldemort. Even when I didn't realize it, and now that that's gone I'm lost."

"But I love you," she said, as if the words he was saying never made it to her ears.

"I love you too, Gin," he said. "I love you so much that I have to let you go."

"Is this because my mother keeps pressuring you to propose?" she asked sharply.

Harry stopped, blindsided by the question. "No, of course not. I didn't even realize—never mind. This is about me needing to heal, and not being able to do it here."

"Hermione convinced you, didn't she?"

Harry didn't respond.

Ginny shook her head angrily. "I should have known. With her going away, right when Ron finally worked up the courage to ask her—but of course, you don't even want to try long distance. You just want to break up. Really says something about our relationship, doesn't it?"

"It's not you, Ginny. It's me. I know that's a terrible cliché, but for once it's true. Hermione and Ron are different people. Me—I need to go away and truly be away. I can't keep clinging onto the past."

"So all this time, that's what we've been doing? Clinging to the past? Well, please excuse me for trying to plan a future together." Her words were becoming fiery, and Harry sighed, wondering how he ever kept up with her.

"I'm sorry, Gin. I wish you all the luck in the world."

That should have been that, except she found him at the airport a week later just as he reached the security checkpoint. She ducked into line next to him, the people behind him giving her dirty looks.

"Sorry, just need to talk to my boyfriend. Not cutting," she said enthusiastically, all smiles for the people around them before turning on her heel and grabbing Harry by the wrist.

"Don't go," she hissed, face inches from hers.

"Don't do this," he said, his heart already aching to go back to his flat and give in to her demands to move in together and buy her a ring just to let Mrs. Weasley have a wedding to plan.

"I have to do this, Harry. I love you. We are soulmates. We are meant to be. People write stories about people like us."

"You've put me up on a pedestal, Ginny, and someday I will inevitably fall. It's better now than later."

"How can you walk away from this?" She whispered, and there was genuine, complete confusion flooded through her eyes and face. Her face was inches from his, and he could feel her breath fanning over his lips and cheeks. It would be so easy to lean into her, to kiss her again like he'd done a thousand times before.

Except now she was his past, not his future.

"I'm learning to write my own story, Gin. Not waiting for someone to write it for me."

"I just don't understand. This is all so sudden. How can you—how can you throw all those years away?" For the first time, her voice broke and Harry could see tears forming in her eyes.

And so he went.