disclaimer: nah-uh. Nor am I a member of TPC.

a/n: Merry Christmas everyone! It's the morning of Christmas eve down here (it's about five in the morning- I know, slight insomniac tendencies!), and I wish you all a super rad Christmas and a great year to come. Wow, that was cheesy. Anyway. Thanks to anyone who reviewed/alerted. Ohkay, onwards. Enjoy. Review. :)))

PART TWO.

'In the night, we're running barefoot, you and I,'- tokyo police club.

You find yourself walking to the kitchens, despite telling yourself that you shouldn't, that you should find your family and make sure they are okay, first. But you're walking along the corridors and dodging crying and laughing (laughing? now?) families and couples and jumping over crushed statues and avoiding ghosts and holding yourself and shivering a little as you walk past the great gaping holes in the wall where the night is coming in and the cold air is freezing you to the bone, and it hits you.

He has no one. He's saved everyone, but he's the one sitting alone in the kitchens now, while even the house-elves dance and march about the grounds and everyone tries their best to cope with the aftermath. It's ironic. And your thoughts are filled with ones of him as you hurtle through the corridors and down the stairs towards him, longing to find him and sit with him and soak in his warmth and pour some of yours onto him, to just be, because that's everything you need right now and probably all he does, too. You stumble down the stairs leading into the Great Hall as you jump the trick steps, but you keep running even though you are not sure why, through the families and friends and cheer in the Great hall until you reach the painting of the fruit bowl, and you tickle the pear with a shaking finger still caked in blood. Even the pear seems giddy as it wriggles into a door handle, and you take a deep breath as you open the door.

You exhale slowly. This is it.

"Hi."

He's sitting with his back to you, all matted black hair and stooped shoulders, and your voice is surprisingly clear in the empty room, bouncing off the walls and thrown back at you.

You cautiously approach the table at which he sits, and he still doesn't turn around. There's something in those bent shoulders and utter stillness that disconcerts you- that's not the Harry you know, and it's freaking you out.

"Harry, it's me," you say in the quiet voice you usually reserve for injured first years, not daring to come any closer. He coughs.

"Harry."

He coughs again, and you notice that he is trembling, ever so slightly. You want to reach out and hold his hand and touch him, but there's something hanging in the air between you, and you can't place it.

Maybe it's anger. Maybe it's disappointment. It could be those things and more; it could be those things and perhaps many things worse. For a fleeting second your heart stops as you think that maybe things are broken between you two and maybe that's the reason it feels so strange, because you've been away for so long and you haven't spoken and you thought he was dead.

You run a rand through your tangled hair, almost out of habit, but you flinch a little as your hair catches on some of the encrusted blood on your hand and a bead of something warm and sticky rolls down your wrist and onto the floor. You tie your hair up after that, bunching it into a ponytail atop your head as you wait for something, anything.

"Ginny..." he breathes quietly and quite suddenly into the silence. You start and inch a little closer to the table. He still doesn't turn around.

"Erm... you...you still there?" his voice is louder now, and exactly how you remember it- clear and deep and gentle- but you can hear the voice of a frightened little child Harry nestled deep inside the words.

"Yeah," you reply, "Yeah, Harry, still here."

He swallows loudly and you feel as though your heart might break for him, sitting there like a shepherd who has become completely redundant as his flock of loyal sheep frolic and play outside, his years of work and guidance all but forgotten.

"Can I... Can I come sit next to you?" You struggle to keep your voice at a normal tone and pitch, because the Harry you know would not want to be spoken to like he was delicate; breakable.

His shoulders square and freeze for a second, before they drop.

"Yeah," he says, "D'you think you could?"

You blink and steel yourself, feeling your heart beat against your chest in sorrow for the boy, who is sitting so quietly and scrunched up that he looks like he wants to disappear into the table and never be seen again. This isn't how it was meant to be, not after what he's done.

You breathe. In and out, in and out.

Then you go around the table and pull the plastic seat closer to his, and he turns to look at you. You clutch the edge of your seat so hard that your knuckles whiten, as you bite your lip and exhale sharply.

The nightmares come flooding into you and all you see is his face painted onto snow dusted grave just atop his birthdate and some date months ago, swimming before you. You see memorial statues with his hair and burning effigies and torn photographs with him missing and newspaper obituaries and-

"Ginny."

You blink.

And you see him. Harry Potter, the boy-who-lived and the boy-who-saved-the-world.

He's still the same, all delicate jawline and perfectly straight nose and teeth and beautiful green eyes and long fingers folded into his lap and pink lips and lightning bolt scar. But he's also long and matted hair, hollowed out cheeks, dark and bloodshot eyes. Long fingernailed and covered in dirt, and he's still everything you remember him to be but not, at the same time. He's Harry, and he's sitting right in front of you and you cannot believe it.

You reach out a shaking hand to touch him, to make sure that this isn't one of those nightmares where he is going to lean in to kiss you but then disappear at the last second, only to reappear in a coffin at his own funeral. But your fingers make contact with his muddied and bloodied jacket, and he's not leaning in to kiss you, and there is certainly neither coffin nor funeral.

Your fingers remain on his shoulder for a second before he seems to crumble beneath them and pulls you into a hug. You hug him back, your fingers spread across his back and his hands pressing into yours, and you swallow as you sit like that for a moment, and you smell him. Once upon a time, when he had been prince charming to your princess, he had smelt distinctly Harry; like parchment and soap and the leather of quaffles and some sort of aftershave and boy.

But now he smells like dirt and blood and sweat and weariness and all things that do not seem to match who he is.

Although, sitting there, you don't know if his being prince charming to your princess is something that exists only in 'once upon a time'.

The minutes pass as you sit there, next to each other, fingers interlaced and arms pressed together, side by side in the kitchens of Hogwarts as the wizarding world rejoices. You can just imagine them outside, laughing and talking and crying- 'but where is Harry Potter?'

And he's sitting next to you, doing that thing where his fingers, long and lithe, dance across the back of your hand seemingly subconsciously, and your hand tingles.

"I'm sorry," he says suddenly, "I'm so sorry about Fred."

You gulp and a new pain- like an iron hand gripping and clenching and twisting round your heart- flashes through your chest and you breathe, "...Fred."

"He was such a good bloke," Harry seems to be aiming to get all the words filling up his chest out into the open in a hurry, tripping over his own words as they spill out and into the air, "And he didn't deserve it. And Lupin and Tonks. Tonks! And they've just had the baby, y'know... and he's going to grow up to be like me-"

"Oh, Harry," you begin, but you're cut off as he continues, stammering.

"And Fred, Fred was two years older than me and he was going to start a joke shop and none of this would have happened if it wasn't for me because I should have made everyone leave- it should have just been me and Voldemort and that would have saved so many people," he's speaking in run-on sentences now, and is breathing quite shallowly as he turns to look at you, eyes tormented. You can see the names that he will not say flashing behind his eyes, haunting him.

Mad Eye. Hedwig. Professor Burbage. Collin. Dobby. Ted Tonks. Snape.

"It's my fault. And this year... I'm so sorry. For everything," he's shaking again, but you're not about to let go of his fingers, not when he is clutching yours so tightly and desperately the tips are starting to turn blue.

You don't need to hear this, not tonight at least. Rational thought leaves you and you pause. Then, you throw caution to the wind and decide that you don't need this, either, this cold and stuffy empty room filled with only your breaths and Harry's guilt. So you stand up and pull him up with you, and he's skinny and still a good inch or two taller than you, and you are glad to see he's not stooping any more, because that's just not right, and he clings to your fingers, still.

"What're we..." his voice falters as you open the door of the kitchens and walk outside, taking him with you. You cross the corridor and arrive in the Entrance Hall, where it is quiet and there's noone but a handful of Slytherins gathered in one corner, silent. They watch you pass and you nod at them. You take one step, two.

You reach the double doors.

"Ginny, what're we...?" you shrug, and open the doors, kicking off your shoes and leaving them in the archway. Harry looks confused for a second, but then there's a flicker of the Harry you know, hidden beneath the grime, and his worn and greying tennis shoes come off, too, and the two of you take off into the night, the cold air rushing over you, and consuming you.

And it's strange, because you're in the middle of all this debris and dust and a battlefield, but you're under the clear night sky and he is clutching still your hand oh-so tightly, but now he is holding it properly, not just grasping at the fingers, and it feels right.

You would almost say it felt good.

'...broken hearts tesselate tonight.'

end a/n: Chhhyeah, that's chapter two. Lyrics credit to Tesselate, Tokyo Police Club. Listen to it! S'good. Um, Merry Christmas again! Reveiws'd be rad. :)