Ginny did two things after she left the Manor the next morning.

1. She went to the Ministry and quit her job.

2. She had a long, terrible conversation with Harry Potter.


At the Ministry, she walked right in, in yesterday's clothing, and sat down before her boss. He looked up at her through crooked glasses, and she saw her future, should she not find the courage to speak, in the soup stain on his robes.

"Mr. Noel," she said, "I have to tell you that I never wanted this job. When I stopped playing Quidditch, I was afraid of having nothing to do, and this was close to Harry, so I took it. But I've come to find out that there are worse things that doing nothing for a little while. All of this is to say that while I appreciate everything you've done for me over the years, I can't stay here any longer."

Mr. Noel sighed, and the very small amount of hair left on his head flopped in the breeze coming through his faux window.

"Are you giving your two week notice then, Ms. Weasley?"

"No," she said thoughtfully. "I'm quitting. Right now."

She stood up and shook his hand, and he looked oddly proud.


Before meeting Harry, she went home and spent hours getting ready, taking much more time than she usually did for anything. Ginny went to the back of her closet to find a sundress, and she put on makeup she hadn't used in months. Finally satisfied, she dug very deep within herself, and set off to Grimmauld Place on foot.

Kreacher answered the door, looking very pleased to see her. He had come a long way since the days of Sirius's imprisonment in the house, and something about his cheery demeanor made her feel better about what she was about to do. Harry would at least have someone to get him out of bed.

He was in his study, really Buckbeak's old room converted. Since moving in, Harry had managed to redo to the house into a place people might actually want to live, painting walls white and getting rid of most of the old furniture. Sirius's bedroom was still exactly the same however, although it had been restored from its ransacked state. Ginny had lived there with him for a while, years back, and it had been in Sirius's room she had realized she wasn't happy. She would go in there and lie in his bed for hours, wondering what was wrong with her, and Harry, afraid of both Sirius's ghost and her, would never bother to come in.

Ginny was never sure how much working really happened in Harry's study, and indeed, when she knocked on the door she heard a drawer slam shut before he called for her to enter.

"Harry, if you're reading Spiderman comics again, you shouldn't hide it from me. Why do you always rush to keep it a secret ?"

"I'm writing reports, Gin," he said. She went in and sat across from him, and raised an eyebrow.

"Fine." Harry opened his bottom drawer and withdrew a comic book. "But it's not Spiderman today, see. It's a wizarding one."

"Much more respectable," she said, and they smiled at one another.

"You look really nice today, Gin. But you weren't at work. I thought maybe you were sick."

"Not sick, not today. I suppose that's part of what you and I need to talk about."

He ran his hands through his hair until it was sticking straight up.

"Well, if we're going to talk, we should go to the living room," he said, and stood up. Ginny made it to the door first, but he managed to grab her arm before she could open it.

"Hey," he said, and she glanced up nervously. He was still smiling, apparently unaware of what kind of talk they were going to have. He hadn't thought her clothes were odd, or that her sitting down across from him rather than on the arm of his chair meant anything. He was blind. "You forgot to give me a kiss."


Kreacher brought them tea in the living room, even stirring Ginny's sugar in without having to ask how she took it.

"Harry, I don't work at the Ministry anymore."

He took a long sip of tea, staring out the window into the garden.

"That's…is that good? They didn't fire you did they? Because if they did I can go in there tomorrow and sort –"

"No, it's not like that. I quit this morning. I mean, when I took that job, we both knew it wasn't forever. That it shouldn't be forever."

"Well, good for you, Gin. I'm glad you're ready to move on." He put his hand on her knee and looked at her fondly, clearly thinking the conversation was at its end. "Should we go out for dinner? Maybe it's a little weird to celebrate quitting, but I think you deserve it."

"No, I don't think so. There's more."

"Oh, ok."

"Harry, it's been a long time since I was a little girl with a crush on you. And back then, I thought there couldn't be anything better than this, than where we are right now."

Harry was starting to look a little frightened; finally, he had seen that something was wrong.

"You're who I want to love, Harry. You always have been."

"But I'm not. Is that what this is?"

Ginny was rummaging in her purse, trying to keep occupied to hold tears at bay. When she found the engagement ring she shoved it into his hands less gracefully than she had imagined she would.

"People change, and I did. We both went to hell and back, except you got farther away than I did. That's not your fault, but it's kept me from you all these years. Didn't you ever think something was wrong, Harry?"

"I just...I wanted you so much more than anything else. I hoped if we ignored the bad things, if I didn't scratch the surface, we were safer."

"Do you understand, though?"

Harry was crying, and so was she, but she felt freer than she had since the day on the beach with Andromeda and Lucius. Freer than that, even. It was almost over, finally.

"I don't know, Gin. I want you to be happy. But I still feel like it's supposed to be you and me."

"Do you trust me?"

"Always, Ginny."

"Then you have to trust that it isn't."


She left soon after that, after making him promise to get over her.

"Not like last time ok? I don't want you to waste more years waiting for me. I'm not worth it."

"Now that's not true," he said with a sad smile. "But I promise to try harder."

"Good. Tell Kreacher goodbye for me."

"You're gonna break his heart too?"

"He's tough. He'll handle it."

Ginny went home, and took her dress off, and ate a bowl of ice cream in her underwear.


Lucius spent the morning in Ginny's room, staring at the ceiling for several hours with barely any movement. Narcissa would be looking for him, he was sure, but he had to make a decision before he went to her. He had to, for once in his life, make a bold move.

Sighing, he put his feet on the floor. His head was pounding hard. Strange, because he had barely had a drop to drink the day before.

He got dressed, taking no care at all to look as if he wasn't wearing yesterday's clothes, and began his long, slow walk. By the time he made it out of the wing Ginny's room was in, there was a persistent tightness in his chest, and by the time he was at the end of the hallway his vision was tunneling. The next thing he knew, he was lying outside the bedroom door, opening his eyes as if he had slept there.

"Lucius?" a voice was saying, and he blinked to see Narcissa towering above him, wrapped in a thin dressing gown. She dropped to her knees beside him, and put his head her lap and her hand on his forehead. "Lucius, what's wrong? Where have you been? Shall I call someone?"

"I'm leaving you," he said, and his voice sounded far away.