Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing! All J.K Rowlings!
A/N I hope you enjoy this! It will be D/G, but I'm going to take my time developing it, so they may not snog for a few chapters.
Ginny Weasley was enjoying her summer vacation. She was lounging by the lake at Hogwarts. She had taken over Madam Pomfrey's position as healer and with no students to attend to during the summer term Ginny had some quite nice leisure time ahead of her. It was funny to her, how many alumni had troubles leaving the alma mater. Hermione visited often, flooing into Hogsmede from London nearly every weekend. Harry had taken up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor, much to the chagrin of Snape and the archnemisis of the Golden Trio, Draco Malfoy, with his quite exspansive bank account and quite deceased parents had taken up residence in Hogsmede as Manager of the Hogs Head Pub.
Draco Malfoy was still an enigma to Ginny. After the "death" of Dumbledore everyone was furious at Snape and Malfoy. No one saw how they could ever be trusted, except Ginny, she restrained herself though. She felt it would be tactless in the face of her headmaster's death to announce that it felt odd, to her, that Draco was unable to kill Dumbledore, yet Snape, whom Dumbledore trusted implicetly killed him without hesitation. Ginny never completely understood what had occurred on that tower that night but three months after Harry returned to England, with Hermione and Ron, after destroying the horcruxes and leading the Order of Pheonix into battle against the deatheaters and Voldemort an extremely bedraggled Snape and Malfoy returned to Hogwarts behind an eye-twinkling and limping Dumbledore.
The reunion had been heart wrenching. Malfoy had stood behind Snape and Dumbledore with his arms crossed and a forced look of disdain on his face, while the moment Harry, who had been helping in the restoration of Hogwarts, saw Dumbledore he ran forward and hugged the old man, then he had stepped back and raised his hand. He muttered a spell, unnecessarily performing it wandlessly, and a green light emited from Dumbledore. "It's really you!" Harry had cried out. "It's not polyjuice, it's not a ghost."
Dumbledore had nodded then beckoned Harry towards him, "I believe this is the point where I suggest we go to my office and have a talk. Once more, a foolish old man has been keeping some secrets from you. This time you seem to have fared quite well though."
"We won, if that's what you mean. But Headmaster, we thought you were dead. We had your funeral. How? What happened?" Harry stumbled over the words, still in shock to see his nearly surregate father standing in front of him.
Dumbledore had explained it to Harry and as Harry had explained it to everyone else, it seemed that Lucius Malfoy had, more or less, sold his son to Voldemort. Draco Malfoy, being the arrogant git he was, did not feel like submiting to anyone's will, be it Dumbledore, Voldemort or any unnamed God. He merely wanted to continue an easy and relatively painless lifestyle. Voldemort realized this, legimilacy and all made it extremely easy. So, Voldemort set him a task. If Draco killed Dumbledore then Voldemort would consider his debt paid and Draco could be free to spend the rest of his days being fed peeled grapes on a chez lounge. If he failed, then Voldemort owned him, completely. Dumbledore couldn't bare the thought of anyone suffering, so instead he decided to die. The only problem was they forgot to inform Draco that Dumbledore wouldn't really die. Well, they hadn't forgotten to tell him, they'd just intentionally mislead him so that Voldemort wouldn't be able to see the details of their plan. So, when Draco was unable to "kill" Dumbledore it was all well and good saying spades about Malfoy as a person, but with all the plans already in place, Snape had to step forward and Snape used the spell on the faux Dumbledore and then they all ran. With Dumbledore "dead" Voldemort wouldn't concentrate on him and so instead Dumbledore could concentrate on aiding in taking down deatheaters as they came across them.
Apparently it was an unnecessarily complex plan which could have been diverted with the simple action of Draco flipping the bird at Voldemort and deflecting to the good side.
Ginny sighed and let her feet drift in the water, she watched as the pinkish tentacles of the giant squid got closer and closer and just before he reached her feet, she pulled them out, and watched the squids tentacles retreat back into the watery depths. She sighed. It had been so long since all of that happened. It had been so long since she stood on the Quidditch Pitch, the battlefield, next to Ron and Hermione and Tonks and Lupin, all behind Harry. And when Voldemort came down and killed Bill and Neville, personally, then stopped killing and called out her name.
"Little Ginerva Weasley," he'd hissed. She never heard what he'd wanted to say to her, though, because in the moment of distraction six wands all pointed at Voldemort and shouted curses of different intensity. Then Harry shouted out the single killing curse. He hadn't tried to be noble and duel Voldemort and he'd always felt a dark evilness in the pit of his stomach for using the curse so callously, but he'd done it to protect millions, and that kept him from going insane.
"Hey, Ginny." She looked up, startled out of her memories. "Are you okay? You look a little pale."
She waved her hand, as if waving away the notion. "Aw, thanks Harry. I'm fine though, really."
He came over and sat down next to her. "I haven't seen you for awhile, what have you been up to?"
"Avoiding you," she said with a chuckle and Harry gave her a gentle shove on the arm. She stuck her tongue out at him. "If I tell you, you can't yell at me. I'm an adult and an employee of Hogwarts now." Harry nodded, but was grimacing at the same time. "It's not that bad! Jeez! You plonker. I've been spending a mite time camping in the Forbidden Forest collecting some quite useful flora for potions."
"The Forbidden Forest, Ginny? You know how dangerous it is in there!" admonished Harry.
"Less dangerous since a certain Great-Evil-Git was vanquished," said Ginny with a smile.
Harry ran his hand through his hair. "Hey, Ginny. Do you wanna go grab a drink?"
Ginny nodded. "Sure, I'm pretty parched. I'm pretty sure this golden tan I was going for has turned into a bloody sunburn, so it's prolly time to get out of the sun, eh?"
The two walked in relative silence to the gates of Hogwarts, enjoying the sun and the friendly company. When the got to the gates, Harry asked, "where to?"
"Hogs Head?" suggested Ginny.
"Do we have to?" groaned Harry, "You-Know-Who works there."
"It's less scary if you say is his real name," said Ginny before apparating to the Hogs Head. Harry followed a moment later.
Ginny had chosen two seats at the bar, although it was an empty afternoon for the pub and there were plenty of tables available. Harry walked in and sat next to her.
Malfoy was working behind the bar, he finished drying the glass in his hand and put it down before walking over to the couple. "Weasley, Potter," he greeted.
"Malfoy," said Harry through clenched teeth.
"Hey Malfoy. Where's Christine today? I thought this was her shift," said Ginny.
"Ususally is, Weasely. She's off on a mini-holiday. Decided that this weather was perfect beach weather and she's skipped off to Brighton with that boy of hers, Mike, Matt, I don't know, never can remember it."
"Oh dear, I always thought his name was Jim," said Ginny with a twisted smile on her face.
Malfoy shrugged, "might be. Might be Ignats for all I know."
"Pay real attention to your employees, don't you Malfoy?" said a terse Harry.
"So," said Malfoy, changing the subject, "how can I help you two prats today?"
"The regular'd be great," said Ginny.
"Just a butterbeer for me," said Harry. Then Harry turned to Ginny. "You come here enough to have a regular?" he asked.
"Oh right she does," said Malfoy from behind the bar. "This little girl is a right lush. Gets pissed here then stumbles home."
Ginny laughed. "Oh, shut it you! I come here because it's right next door and some git always manages to steal my broom if I have a single drink anywhere else."
"Wouldn't want you to fall off your broom, would I?" asked Malfoy.
"Just give me my drink, Malfoy."
"See, what did I say? A right lush," said Malfoy as he handed the drinks to Harry and Ginny.
"Cheers, Malfoy," said Ginny.
"No problem. All be over here looking like the surly bartender, call me if you need anything."
"So what have you been up to?" asked Ginny.
"Honestly, I've been looking for Ron."
"Oh, Harry." Ginny looked down into her drink. "You know he's not ready to be found yet."
"I know. But I miss him, ever since he ran off after the war."
"He didn't run off, he just relocated. He was captured by the deatheaters, Harry. He has some bad memories and I think if he needs to go away for a while to make it better, then he should be allowed to do so in peace."
"But, we're partners! I've been through a lot too, why am I not enough for him to talk to?" cried out Harry.
"Because, Harry, you're the one he's always compared to. And, while you are his best friend, he knows that whatever he's been through you will still one-up him, without meaning to. He needed to get away from it all."
"Yeah, I suppose," muttered Harry.
"You know, he might be coming back soon," said Ginny softly.
"Really?" asked Harry, looking up at her.
She nodded. "He still writes Hermione, he still wants to marry her, it's sweet. But she said, that in his last letter, he was talking about preparations to come back."
"That's good," said Harry. "That's very good."
"It really is. I miss him too, you know. And with him gone, I realize just how little I see the rest of the family, and then I feel guilty, and then I get roped into going to Sunday suppers with the family and then I realize that I never want to see anyone from that madhouse for at least another year."
Harry roared with laughter. "Hey! I go to those family dinners, they aren't that bad!"
"Maybe not for Harry Potter wizarding hero extradorinairre. But for little old Ginny Weasley, unmarried nurse at Hogwarts, they are torture!" She smiled. "In a good way though," she added.
She looked up at the clock on the wall of the pub, who's hands were made of finger bones, and realized that it was after eight. She stood up. "I should get going."
"Why?" asked Harry.
"Matt'll be waiting. I promised him we could have dinner together. I guess I'm a little late," she said with a shrug. "Hey, Malfoy." He turned towards them. "Put this on my tab, thanks."
Malfoy waved back at her. "Careful walking home. Don't run into a tree or anything."
"Thanks for caring," she shouted back, as she opened the door.
"Emotion? Never," said Malfoy looked insulted. "I just wouldn't want to lose one of my favorite neighborhood alchoholics. Bye Weasley."
Harry and Ginny walked out the door.
"See you around Harry. Don't try too hard to uncover Ron's hiding place. He'll come back when he's ready. "
Harry nodded. "Yeah. So, er, have fun at dinner tonight."
"Thanks." She leaned forward and hugged Harry. "It was good seeing you. Next time Hermione's in town we should all go for a drink."
"Definitely. Bye Gin'." He said before apparating off.
A/N- That's all for now! Chapter two is coming up shortly. Do you feel like reviewing? You do? That's fantastic! Thank you so much!