A/N: It's nearly over! I think we're heading for either 28 or 32 chapters- and yes. This is completed. I could count. But that would be LOGICAL now, wouldn't it? And God knows I'm pretty much everything but that. Girl's gotta have standards, after all.

"You know, they look nothing like me," Ginny said, curled up on one of the grey armchairs in the master suite's sitting room.

"I think they look a little like Ron," I said, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that we were avoiding the topic. And when I'll admit to skirting the issue- admit to it, mind, not just do it- it's very awkwardly obvious. "It's their eyes, I think."

"Your eyes," she argued, "green, I mean."

"The shape though," I said, after a moment. "The shape of their eyes is a lot like Ron's."

"They have Mum's hands," she said. And it struck me again how little I knew of my sons- I couldn't even summon up a picture of their hands, let alone compare them to Molly's work-worn ones. "They have her nails. I bet they'll chew them, too."

"Why?"

"We all do, it's near as we ever got to a family tradition. I was worst by far until Mum taught me the enchantments to make them taste bad. Fred was probably next to worst," here she bit her lip and I moved closer to her on the couch. If I listed my regrets- and I'd be going on for days, if I did- that would be one of the biggest. Her family was falling down all around her, and I was so far away. I was there when Ron died, of course, but I was nearly as heartbroken as she was. Then when Percy died, I was leaving, I only had a day. A bloody fucking day to try to do whatever it is I could.

And what I could do was nothing.

"You should talk to Molly," I said, after a minute. "If I've brought you out we should take her home, they'll insist."

"I've missed her so much," she says, "but I'm glad she was safe." She doesn't say it, but I hear her thanks in that.

"She's family," I said. "I take care of family."

"And me?"

"More than family," I said, after a moment, and it felt like I was sixteen again, asking her out for the first time. My stomach was doing acrobatics, my heart was just a little higher than my throat and it was all very terrifying. "Like a, like a part of me."

And that was it, the catalyst. I can't tell you how it happened, but we were both in tears and we were holding each other and it was all the way things are supposed to be.

"We don't do this," she said, more to herself than to me. "We're the strong ones."

"Not always," I said, into her hair, "we don't always have to be. Not anymore."

"Love you," she told me, "like nothing else."

"I know," she was shaking, breaking, falling and it was like freedom. "I know what that feels like." And she laughed at me.

"Not quite, Harry," she said, pulling back, running a hand along my cheek- the contrast of her pale, long fingers to my dark stubble so clear in the mirror across from us. "I don't think you'll ever quite know."

"Why not?" I pulled the hand to my mouth, kissed each of her fingers. Once we had started- it was something crazy, something I don't understand and don't want to. Something that doesn't need to be understood to be had.

"Because I've been this way since before forever," she murmured, moving close to my ear. "I saw you and it was just there."

"What was there?"

"Everything."