A/N YAY FOR UPDATES! Most of you said you wanted chapters as soon as they were ready so here this one it...So we are going to start time jumping again so we can start moving faster towards our next main plot point but I couldn't jump all the way there so I thought I would add in some fluffy goodness in between so that's what the next few chapters will be...hope you enjoy! And as always special thanks goes to Augurey Song for being my Beta

Ginny sat back in her favorite oversized armchair as she observed Christmas morning at the Weasley house. She couldn't help but smile at the fact that no matter how old they got, she could count on one thing never changing, her brothers would always act like children on Christmas morning.

All of her brothers had spent Christmas Eve at home, much to her mothers delight, so everyone was still in their pajamas as they had just finished opening presents. Ginny surveyed the room, taking in the pursuits of its occupants.

A seven month pregnant Penelope was gently rubbing her stomach as she sat with Mrs. Weasley and Fleur, discussing baby names and wedding plans even though Bill and Fleur's wedding wasn't until the following summer.

Percy-- who had shown up a few months earlier with a pregnant wife on his arm, had been welcomed back into the family after profusely apologizing for his actions-- was curled up in the arm chair by the fire, reading the book that Hermione had given him

Hermione was sitting in the chair next to Percy, pretending to be reading the book he had given her, but in actuality was really watching Ron adoringly, as he tried to keep the twins' gift to him from eating his slippers while he was wearing them.

The twins on the other hand, were engaged in a fierce wrapping paper war against Bill and Charlie and had just dived behind their father's chair in order to avoid getting pelted with crumpled up wads of the colorful paper, but Mr. Weasley didn't even notice, as he was too busy reading a VCR repair book

Ginny couldn't stop smiling at this scene, until she noticed that one conspicuous person was missing from this tableau. She put on the white snow jacket that the missing person had just given her over her blue and green plaid flannel PJs and quietly left the room unnoticed. She went upstairs making stops in both her and Ron's room before continuing her way up to the attic.

Once in the attic, she knew her instincts were correct on where Harry had disappeared to when she saw the window open. As she crawled out onto the roof she saw him sitting by himself with his knees up to his chest, shivering since he didn't have the sense to bring a coat with him.

"You're going to catch your death of cold up here without this," she said as she tossed him the jacket she had stopped off in Ron's room for on her way up. "At least you had the sense to melt the snow and use a drying charm before you sat down on the snowy roof."

He took the jacket gratefully and didn't say a word as Ginny sat down next to him, wrapping the blanket she had snagged from her room around them both.

"You have been hanging out with me too long," Ginny stated simply after sitting in silence for a few moments.

"Why do you say that?" Harry asked, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye.

"You seemed to have picked up my habit of escaping to roof tops when you want to be alone," she said, half-seriously half-teasingly.

"Well they are a good place to think," he replied in the same tone.

"I've thought so for years," Ginny said with a hint of smile before falling quiet once more. "So are you going to tell me why you needed a place to escape and think instead of being down stairs with everyone else enjoying their Christmas presents, or are you going to make me freeze out here all morning?"

"You didn't have to come up here you know, you can go back inside if you are cold," he told her a little more pointedly than he intended.

Ginny just gave him a look that told Harry exactly what she thought about that last statement.

"Sorry," Harry replied ashamed at himself for his tone and harsh words. No one else could convey so much in a single look, he thought to himself.

"As you should be," Ginny told him as she snuggled further into the blanket. "Now are you going to tell me why you are out here trying to catch hypothermia instead of being downstairs with the rest of the family watching Ron's feet get eaten or listening to my mom trying to convince Penelope that Eugenia is a fine baby name?"

Instead of smiling like Ginny had intended, this just seemed to depress Harry more as his eyes clouded over and he gave an almost inaudible sigh.

"That's just it Ginny, the family is downstairs. Your family to be more specific, not mine. Everyone downstairs is a part of your family, or at least is going to be," he said abjectly.

"Hermione is downstairs and she isn't technically part of the family," Ginny reminded him, causing him to give a kind of half laugh.

"Not yet, at least. Promise not to tell?" he asked.

Ginny nodded and looked at him curiously.

"Last night Ron told me that he is planning to propose as soon as we graduate in June," Harry confided.

"Really?" Ginny asked, excited that Hermione was going to officially be her sister before she remembered what the real issue was. "But Harry, you know that names don't matter to us. You know you have been accepted as a part of our family since you were twelve."

"I know," Harry said looking intently at the blanket that was wrapped around him. "And believe me, I appreciate that more than you will ever know. You have all been the only family I have ever known, and you mean more to me than I could ever express. I feel ungrateful saying this, but sometimes I just wish that I had a family of my own, you know… my own flesh and blood that care about me as much as I care about them, you know, someone besides the Dursleys. Most of the time I have no problem accepting it, and moving past it, but there are times I really miss that I don't have good family memories from when I was a child, or that I don't have traditions to pass onto my children. I don't even know if my parents had traditions to pass onto me."

Ginny felt the mixture of shame, anger and sadness that she always felt whenever she remembered the awful circumstances in which Harry had been forced to grow up. She was so used to having Harry around, and he had become such a fixture of the Weasley family, that she forgot that he wasn't really a part of the family and failed to realize that he might feel this way, or how all the Weasley traditions, and they were plentiful, might affect him. Especially the Christmas Eve tradition of sitting around the fire sharing memorable stories of Christmas past.

"Well Harry, even though I know its not the same, I want you to know that my family all loves and cares about you as if you really were a Weasley," she told him once more.

"I know," Harry said quietly.

"But I don't think that you are going to be able to get exactly what you want until you have a family of your own."

"But what if I never have my own family?" he asked her.

"Harry you are a great guy, someday, you are going to meet the girl of your dreams, and you are going to fall in love, and marry her, and have four children."

"Four?"

"Yes four: two boys and two girls."

"Really now," he asked a little disbelievingly but smiling never the less.

"Yup," she told him, returning his smile. "Picture this," she said pulling the blanket tighter around them as she began to portray his future in a day dreamy kind of voice. "It's Christmas morning and you and your wife are in still asleep because you two are exhausted since you had held the Christmas Eve festivities at your house the night before, and you guys had been up late cleaning up and preparing for today. And even though you guys could have slept till noon, you wake at seven in the morning to three little people jumping up onto your bed.

"You lie still, hoping that maybe if you pretend that you are still asleep they will go away, but your wife, knowing that it is futile, wakes up telling you to get up and to take the children downstairs while she gets the baby up. You roll over and open your eyes to see your two oldest children, a boy about seven with messy black hair and a girl about five with long silky black hair staring at you expectantly with their identical green eyes. However your youngest daughter, a spirited little girl of two, who also inherited your eyes, is still jumping on the bed, her red curls bouncing up and down in the early morning light. You get up, pull on your favorite robe and grab your daughter mid jump as you make your way towards the family room, the two older ones running down the hallway and down stairs in front of you. You get downstairs and into the family room and start a fire in the huge fireplace before sitting down in your favorite overstuffed armchair.

"The children beg you to let them start opening their presents, anxious to see what Father Christmas had brought them, but you tell them they have to wait until their mother comes down with their little brother, who is only a few months old, before they start. So they pass the time by sifting through the mountain of gifts situated beneath a mammoth tree all lit up by fairly lights, which you had all decorated as a family the week before, all of them secretly eyeing which ones are theirs and hoping that they each get what they most desire.

"You already know that your son's favorite gift is going to be his first real broom and you are almost more excited than he is to get up in the air so you can teach him the finer points of Quidditch. You cant wait to see your older daughter's eyes light up when you bring out the new puppy that you currently have hidden in the study. And you know from experience that even though you bought her lots of expensive toys, your two year old will enjoy the boxes they came in more than the toys themselves.

"Your wife finally comes into the family room carrying a little bundle of blankets that you only know is your youngest son from the tuft of bright red hair peaking out from over the top. Your three oldest look back and forth from you and your wife waiting for the go ahead to start handing out presents. You nod at your son giving him the cue to find a present with his name on it, and one for each of his sisters, and all three of them start tearing into them at once. In a flurry of wrapping paper and ribbon, you catch your wife's gaze and you look at each other with such love and adoration and in that moment know that nothing in the world could make you happier than you are in that moment."

Ginny finished her scenario for the future, and neither of them spoke for a good ten minutes as they digested what she had said.

Harry felt warm inside as he thought about the wonderful life that Ginny had created and wondered if he would ever be that happy and hoping that even a fraction of Ginny's prediction would come true. She had described it so well that he played it over and over again in his head like a home movie of his future. As he thought about his pretend future family one thing struck him as odd.

"Ginny?" he asked, turning to the girl who was still lost in thought. "Ginny?" he said again when he realized she didn't hear him.

"Huh?" she responded, only half-listening as she too was still thinking about the ideal future she had created.

"Why did two of my kids have red hair?" he asked with honest curiosity.

"What?" she asked snapping out of her daze as if she had been burned.

"You said my two younger children had red hair, I was just wondering why," he explained.

"Oh...well," Ginny said standing up suddenly, "Your mother was a redhead, so I figured that you carried the gene as well," she explained quickly as she gathered up the blanket while avoiding Harry's glance. "Besides, that's not your actual future, I was just making that up. For all I know your children could take after their mother."

Ginny paused for a moment as she said this, because in her version of the future, the two younger children did take after their mother, because she was their mother. She was completely mortified with herself for actually telling him her own Christmas wish for the future, but she only let herself dwell on this for a moment before she pushed it out of her mind, resolving to not figure out what that meant now, but leave it for tomorrow when she had more time. Today it was Christmas, and she planned to enjoy it.

"Well, I don't know about you," Ginny said wanting to change the subject, "but I am starving and Mum probably has breakfast waiting on us and since we have been gone so long we should hurry before things get really ugly between all my brothers. You don't want to come between them and their food, trust me, I know."

Harry only hesitated for a moment before getting up to follow Ginny downstairs.

A/N YAY FOR FLUFF! I know it's a couple days late but I thought some Christmas fluff was appropriate don't you think? Well tell me what you think and perhaps tell me what your favorite line is...the next chapter is like 90 percent written so I just have to finish it off and send it to be beta'ed so that one should be ready within the next few days...