"What did you want to be when you grew up?" Ginny asked Harry suddenly.

They were lounging in the grass under the large oak tree on the edge of the Burrow's property lines, but far away still from the reporters that were haggling for a picture of war-torn hero.

Ginny leaning against the trunk, legs crossed with her charms book in her hands, though she hadn't actually processed a word of it in probably fifteen minutes.

He opened his eyes and peered up at her from where he was laying on his back, only a foot from her, basking in the warm July sun. "What made you ask that?"

"Just been wondering what your dreams used to be," she said simply.

"Well…" he started to chuckle softly and leaned up on his elbow to face her and looked sheepish. "You can't make fun of me, okay?"

She hung her mouth open in mock offense which made him grin. "I'd never dream of teasing you."

"Well… Uncle Vernon worked at a steel plant-"

"What is a steel plant?" She cocked her head, intrigued.

"A place where the make a special kind of metal that makes things like those skyscrapers in London, and cars." He looked amused, and she felt slightly embarrassed that he'd cottoned on to her muggle obsession. She was a lot like her dad in that way.

"There was this one time when mine and Dudley's primary class took a trip to his work which was next to an airfield, you know that thing that Hermione and Ron took to Australia?" She nodded at him as she set her book down and laid next to him on the quilt. She watched him get slightly distracted by her movement and decided to pack that away for another time. "An airfield is where they keep aeroplanes and where they take off. Well, it was the only field trip I was able to go on, because Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia couldn't think of a reason why not, and since my teacher would meet him and ask why he allowed Dudley and not me, they allowed me to go." She watched his eyes cloud, like looking back into the past, the ghost of a smile on his lips. "And while Uncle Vernon droned on about whatever with his work, I just watched the aeroplanes take off and land, and I decided then I would be a pilot."

"A pilot?" she asked, her lips tugging upwards. She felt that warmth again, the kind she only ever felt when he would open up to her about his childhood. He was doing that a lot lately, at least about some of the happier parts. The month and a half since the war had ended had brought them closer than before, and she marveled in the trust he had in her.

"They're the ones that fly them, right?" Harry looked slightly surprised. "Sometimes Muggle Studies is right, you know," she teased him. He rolled his eyes but laughed regardless, and she caressed his cheek lightly. She watched as he leaned into it slightly. "You wanted to fly."

He nodded, blushing a bit. "Yeah, I wanted to fly. And then, three years later, Malfoy steals Neville's Remembrall and I found out I could fly, for real."

"Is that what you want to do now?"

He didn't answer, and he laid back down on his back. Ginny scooted so she could cuddle up next to him, and his arm encircled around her, his large hand on her back.

"No, it's not." She didn't speak. She only entertwined their other hands, rubbing her thumb across the back of his hands, a habit she'd picked up last spring. She noticed it calmed him sometimes. She let him think, to tell her on his own without too much prodding.

"Quidditch was the first real thing I've ever loved in my life besides maybe Hogwarts, but it's not how I see my future."

She of course knew this. She wondered what had taken so long for them to have this conversation.

"I'm not coming back to Hogwarts," he said quietly. "Kinglsey's asked me and a few others to become Aurors, and I have to…"

"You have to find the remaining Death Eaters."

He nodded and swallowed. "You don't seem surprised."

"I'm not," she said, looking up at him. "Not really. I meant what I said last year at Dumbledore's funeral about knowing you wouldn't be happy unless you were fighting Voldemort. It still stands." She rested her chin on his chest and continued to look at him. His fingers twirled the tendril of hair that escaped her holder.

"It doesn't feel like he's gone."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"It doesn't feel like he's gone sometimes. Not with attacks still happening, and the trials… With all of this still going on, it feels like he still has some kind of hold on me, like it's not over and it never will be."

She couldn't argue with him, at least on the point about the missing Death Eaters. "Maybe it's not quite over yet, maybe it won't be for a while, but it will be eventually. The trials won't go on forever, and you will catch them. The Lestrange brothers can't stay hidden forever, and neither can Dolohov."

"You don't think I'm 'holding on to the war'?" he asked bitterly, almost scathingly.

"Is that why you're cross with Ron and Hermione?"

They'd returned from Australia, only a few days previous, having finally found her parents, and last night the three of them had some kind of row that left Harry thin lipped and silent at dinner, and Ron and Hermione worried.

Harry sighed heavily. "They said that I can't let it go and move on. Hermione's worried I'm only thinking about becoming an Auror because of Voldemort and what I went through. She thinks I'm only doing it because it's all I've known."

"Is that what you think?"

"Sometimes…" He continued to twirl her hair, looking the most unsure she'd ever seen him. "You?"

"I think it helps, but I also think that you'd be an Auror if none of this had ever happened to you." At his look, Ginny continued with a slight huff. "Harry, you love mystery. You have this desire to figure things out, even when no one else can. Think about it, really. You never would've tried to figure out anything to do with Nicholas Flamel your first year, no matter what, if that wasn't part of who you were. Normal people, normal children," she emphasized, "don't go snooping around the way you seem to do. Sure, Voldemort had something to do with it, but you didn't really know any of that at the time, and most people wouldn't continue to put themselves in danger like that. But you wanted to. You had to. It's who you are." He was looking at her in an awed sort of way. "And you do the right thing, even if you don't always like it. Hermione's right, you have a saving people thing, and you want to protect people, rid the world of evil and all of that. Even if you'd had a normal life without Tom Riddle's interference, you'd still be the poster boy for future Aurors."

Harry kissed her suddenly, deeply, and she couldn't help the sigh that escaped her. He pulled the rest of her hair free from and entangled his fingers in it, then cradling her face. She could feel that kiss in her toes.

When he pulled away, he left her thoroughly dazed, and she laughed. "What was that for?"

"For being you. For knowing me as well as you do."

She pressed her lips to his in a soft kiss before smiling and pulling away. "Speaking Harry is a rather refined talent of mine."

They stared at each other stupidly, both still a little breathless when he looked as if he suddenly remembered something.

"You always wanted to fly as well," he said, a little smugly, and she knew what he would say before he says it, "You told me so in the stands of the pitch last spring."

Ginny blushed, and not just at the memory of exactly how far they'd gone in the stands of the pitch, the sounds of their gasps as hands travelled farther than either dared with someone else. Uncharacteristically shy, she mutteredZ "I did, didn't I?"

"Do you still want to?" he asked softly.

"Of course, I do, but the older I get the more I realize how unrealistic that dream is."

He seemed offended on her behalf, which was in her opinion not only the reaction she'd deeply prayed to get from him, but also incredibly sweet. "Why is it unrealistic, you're a fantastic flier-"

"I'm also a girl, Harry," she said with a sigh while she sat up. "And female quidditch players are rare."

"What about the Harpies?"

"That's different. They're the only all-female team in the league, and they rarely accept new players, and the league itself has only been getting over their aversion to the gender in general the last ten years." She knew she sounded whiny, desperate, and probably bitter, but she couldn't help it. All her life she'd heard the narrative that girls couldn't play Quidditch, that they were too small, or too slow, or just plain bad at it. And yeah, perhaps she was spiteful over hearing things like that, and maybe that's what drew her so much to prove everyone wrong, but she genuinely loved the game. Flying was the only sure thing she could count on for most of her life, the one thing that she could do on her own and no one else could touch.

"If anyone can do it, you can."

Ginny glanced back at Harry, who wore that stupid teasing but smitten smirk and she believed him a little too.

"You're supposed to say that." She rolled her eyes, but her heart wasn't in it, and she knew he could tell.

"You've always been a great flier, come on. You're a natural," He leaned back on his elbow. "I bet you were even a natural at seven when you were 'borrowing' brooms-"

She gaped at him. "Don't say borrowing like that!" She almost yelled, shoving him by the shoulders and clambering on top of him.

"Like what?" He grabbed onto her hips and adopted an innocent look that she desperately wanted to snog off of him.

"Like you mean stealing!"

The plonker had the nerve to laugh. He tried to reach his face up, probably to kiss her but she shoved his face away with her hand.

"Absolutely not, you don't get to accuse me of being a klepto and then try to snog me-" He hooked his fingers into the loops of her jeans and yanked her back as she attempted to scramble away from him, and she shrieked with laugher before his lips met hers and everything but him and the warmth of the sun melted away.

(Title from the song by Ottis Redding)