AN: All right guys, here's the real end. I hope you enjoyed the story and will enjoy the epilogue. Now, even though the story is complete and won't be any more updates, please drop some reviews. I really appreciate knowing that people read my stories, and I love getting feedback (positive or negative) and I will use the feedback to make my next story (which I am slowly working on) even better. Thanks for all the support all the way through!
I looked at his turned back. What was he thinking? How could he think that I would ever not help him? So now he's given up.
"Ginny, it's what you think. I'm not giving up because I want to. It's because I have no choice."
"Harry! You have a choice!" How could he think that everything he does is because he has to do it? He's fully capable of making his own decisions, most of the time.
"Please, understand me. I can't help rebuild everyone's lives. It's too big of a job for me. I'm the destroyer of evil, not the creator of good. I destroyed Voldemort once and gave everyone hope. I destroyed him again and managed to destroy my friends' lives. Now they're asking me to be the hero again and kiss babies and stuff. That's not me. I want to blend into the background."
He turned around and looked at me. He later denied it, but plain as day, I saw tears in his green eyes. Tears of frustration and grief. I couldn't get mad at him. I had told him I would stand by him no matter what he wanted to do. If I don't support him now, he'll just disappear again on me. "Where are we going?" I asked him quietly. I could feel the desire in his gaze, desire to get away from everything that surrounded him here, everything that came with being the sole defeater of Voldemort. He wouldn't sit here and watch as everyone else struggled to live after The Battle, after so much loss. It wasn't in his nature to sit passively, to tell people he couldn't help. He would always try, but maybe just this once, he wouldn't. Although, maybe, just this once he couldn't. Most of the people that had died on our side were people that Harry himself had told what to do. Harry had sent most of these families to cemeteries to claim the mangled bodies of their kin. Even I wouldn't be able to keep him here and make him go back to his old life.
"We?" he asked. I stared at him incredulously.
"Harry," I said sadly. He hung his head. He knew what I was going to say, but I had to make sure he really knew. "I know you're going to leave. I can't, I won't ask you to stay, but I will ask you to take me with you."
"You're so young!" he protested.
"So are you, yet you feel like you've aged beyond numbers. War makes people grow up a little faster."
"Just wait two years, I'll come back for you. I promise." He looked at me, begging me to tell him that it was okay, that I'd let him go off on his own.
"No."
"Why not, Ginny? You have your own problems to deal with here. Running away isn't the answer. Not for you. I know you, you like to fight things through to the bitter end."
"Maybe I do have problems here. Maybe I do need to work out a bunch of things with a bunch of people. But my biggest problem right now is you, and that I will fight until the bitter end."
Harry's shoulders slumped. And in that moment, I knew he understood. I would never leave him, and he will never leave me.
---
"Please talk to your sister. I need to get out of here, and she can't come along. She's so young!"
"She's not a little girl anymore. If you really want to leave her here, then just disappear in the middle of the night again."
"Ron, you know I can't do that!"
Finally, he got the idea. After all we've done for him, how could he even think to leave again. I've missed him. "Then either take her with you, or stay here. She will go where you go, but by God, don't tell her one thing and do the other, it'll kill her."
He looked at me. He knew I was right. And if he hurt my sister one more time, it'll kill him too, I'd make sure of it.
"But she's so-"
"Don't even say it. After what she saw during The Battle, she's not an innocent little girl that you can protect. And why aren't you worried about me coming with you? Did you think you could give me the slip? I'm sorry, but you are sorely mistaken. Where you go, Harry, I'm coming with you. You can't be alone, it will drive a man insane."
"Ron, it's not that I was going to leave you!" he protested.
"What? So you'll allow me to come with you, but you won't let Ginny? Why?"
"Because I'm scared!" Harry shouted. I looked at him, stunned. Scared? Of what? "What if she comes with me and decides she can't handle it? What if she decides that I'm not worth the trouble? And some things have to be done alone. I had to face Voldemort alone, and I have to face the results alone too."
"When will you understand? You have come home to a family that loves you. You never have to face anything alone again. You have me; you have Hermione; you have Ginny; you have my entire family!" I glared at him, angry with him for not understanding. I know he wasn't being a prat by decision, but his self-pity was getting to be too much. "And what on earth would you have to face that my sister wouldn't be able to handle?" After he left, Ginny had gone through so much, if there was something out there she couldn't handle, I was not going to let my best friend handle it alone. And yes, I was angry with him, I was ready to curse him to oblivion, but by God, he was my best friend, and I was going to make him learn that he will never be alone again, no matter how many times he forgot that I have stuck with him from beginning to end.
"Guilt." he answered solemnly.
"Guilt!" I shouted. How could he think he was the only person to deal with guilt; how dare he? "Because knowing that you might be alive out there, somewhere, while holding hands with a near stranger; knowing that no one was out looking for you because everyone was needed at home and knowing she was capable to go looking yet didn't; thinking that you left because of her, has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with guilt. While you were gone, she had to deal with a lot more than you did."
"Ron."
"Harry," I began, my face loosening a little bit. I wasn't going to lose my temper.
"Where's Hermione?" he asked, changing the subject resignedly. I could see the guilt in his eyes. He knew that he was the reason Ginny had to deal with so much.
"She's out shopping for her parents' anniversary. And don't worry about Ginny. She was given nothing more than she could handle. Perhaps you did the right thing by leaving. Maybe what you needed was some time alone, and if you had come home right away, you wouldn't have gotten two minutes to think peacefully."
"And perhaps I did the worst thing by leaving," Harry offered miserably.
"Perhaps, but we don't know. I don't think we'll ever know, and honestly, I don't care. All that matters is you're back now, and once again, I've got someone to just sit next to at the Leaky Cauldron and have a few good laughs with." Harry opened his mouth and I cut him off, "Someone I've known only as a guy's best mate, doesn't have red hair, or try to tell me that they're sorry for me."
Harry grinned at me and I couldn't help but return the unguarded smile. Harry was back, not just physically, but emotionally now too.
---
How could I ever have doubted them? Ron was right; they've been with me from day one. They've given me no reason to think that they wouldn't care; yet I ran away from them, thinking that I would never be welcomed in their presence again.
I never thought I'd say this and mean it, but it feels good to be home.
I took in the emerald green walls and the posters of Quidditch teams. I smiled at the picture on the nightstand next to the rickety bed. I ran my hand over the worn desk, reveling in the feeling of the age-softened wood. A year ago, I couldn't have said what this room looked like. It was always kept closed, warding off unwanted visitors, keeping the room clean and familiar to the boy flying with dragons in Romania. But now the door was always open, and I knew every centimeter of the room. With one glance at the small room, I could tell you if a wind had blown through and shifted the thin curtains. Other people might call it shabby, most would call it a step down from my room of my childhood days, but I'd call it a thousand steps up, and immeasurable improvement. It was the best room a man could want. It was my room, not Dudley's second bedroom, but my bedroom. Though not everything in the room was mine, it didn't have to be. Some things could never be moved. The calendar on the wall remained. It was eight years old with a big red circle around twenty-seventh of July. 'Romania!' was written across it in bold letters.
I smiled while I sat down, listening to the creaking of the bed. I rolled over, listening to the creaking and groaning as if it were music. I laced my fingers together and rested my head on them. Who was I kidding? I wasn't going anywhere. Just because I could leave the country and start a new life didn't mean I should. This was where I belonged, no matter how hard it would be to tell people I wasn't going to be the hero anymore, I wasn't going anywhere: this is my home and no one will ever chase me out.
One year and seven days after I told Ginny Weasely I loved her while hovering above the Quidditch pitch, I won The Final Battle. I defeated the last remains of Lord Voldemort. I overcame the monster within me and won The Final Battle, the battle to love again.
