Author's Note: Inspired by "Rainbow," (2017) by Sia. Sia sings, 'I can see a rainbow / in your tears.' This is my take on a small town kind of romance where Harry left to go to the big city to play music, and Ginny waits for him to come home. Inspired in part by real-life events. My brother left when I was ten. He came back when he was twenty-eight, and I was nineteen. We're still working on it.
There are some things that Harry does that Ginny doesn't understand. When they're ten, Ginny dares Harry to steal a bottle of fobscottle out of her mother's kitchen cabinets. He just wanted to watch the bubbles swirl downwards. He didn't want to drink it. Looking at his face, seeing the joy and wonder in his eyes, Ginny didn't have the heart to tell him no. She got caught putting it back, and after the yelling had finished, her mum told her to look out for Harry Potter. Mum doesn't have to ask. They're the best of friends.
Ginny and Harry are fifteen and they're flying behind the house when Harry tells her that he'll race her to the horizon. Ginny looks at him oddly; you can't race to the horizon, everybody knows that. She tells him so. But he smiles so wide, and he looks so care-free, his tousled black hair ruffling in the wind, that Ginny cannot stop him. They race to and fro across the skyline.
Tragedy strikes when they're twenty-three. Harry's godfather, Sirius, passes away from a magical sickness. Harry is devastated. He looks through Ginny at the funeral. No matter what she does or says, he won't look at her. She's worried he maybe never will. One day, Ginny wakes up, and Harry's gone. He pulls a disappearing act.
It hurts, the way it always does, being the one left behind. Once the shock wears off, Ginny's pissed. She's beyond angry. There's a hurricane roiling around in her chest, and she is at its tender mercies. She is a poisonous mix of hurt, worry, apathy, and ever-growing pit in the bottom of her stomach that says Harry is never planning on coming back. That he's gone for good this time. Missing him and knowing he'll never coming back hurts twice as much as if he'd disappeared into thin air. It hurts to think that maybe Harry doesn't care about her as much she cares about him.
Ginny does what all people must. She carries on. Yes, her heart is broken, and no, that doesn't change a thing. She gets a job at the Apothecary. It's dull work with only some moments of brightness interspersed through the days and weeks she works there. Ginny cannot help but think that Harry would hate it. Harry was made for greater things. He would probably tell that so was she. He was sweet, Ginny thinks. But he's not here with her.
Ginny knows her mum is worried about her. She doesn't care. If something was going to happen, it would've happened already, she thinks.
One day, apropos of nothing, Harry walks into her life. There's no warning. If she was a little less restrained, Ginny would break down crying, screaming, tell him to never ever leave her like that again. She thinks he might listen this time. She can convince him to stay this time.
They're a year shy of thirty. It's been six years since they saw each other. Harry has a guitar slung across his shoulders. He's smiling at her like she is everything he has ever wanted, like there was nothing that could ever stop him from coming back for her, and Ginny. Ginny looks at Harry. She thinks about all the times she wondered if he was ever coming back, of the tearstains on her pillowcase. Her heart squeezes. She thinks about how she wants him back. And she thinks maybe she can give him another chance. Just once.
This isn't where the story ends. They both need to explain themselves, and there will be plenty of tears. But that's alright. They'll be fine. The best stories are always a little tragic.