Post-DH, obvious spoilers. This follows on neatly from my 'Charming Wizards' fic.

This contains some quasi-canon information found in various JKR interviews, specifically (but possibly not limited to) Umbridge's fate and Harry's future career.

It couldn't be much past one o'clock.

Ginny knew this because she had been lying awake in her bed, sheets twisted around her, since just after eleven. She had managed to endure the atmosphere downstairs for longer than what had become normal, because Harry was now at the Burrow. However, her family home had infected even him throughout the evening, pulling apart his smiles and dissecting his laughter so it sounded like a hollow, empty noise.

She shouldn't have brought him here.

But, oh, she'd been hoping that her mum's instincts would kick in when she saw a boy who she considered to be her own son, or that one of her brothers might crack a smile and strike up a conversation about Quidditch, or that her father might do something. She'd hoped that bringing an outsider into their fractured house might mean the cracks would seal themselves over.

It hadn't worked, and the strains were beginning to show in the person she had selfishly sought salvation from. Hadn't the wizarding world drained Harry Potter enough already? It had only been a week. One week since Voldemort's demise, one week since Fred had died, and already Ginny couldn't bear seeing Bill's solemn face at the breakfast table. She had longed for Charlie to come home for so long, but she didn't expect it to be like this. He was a man of actions rather than words, but she'd rather his trembling voice than his shaking hands and that grim set of his mouth. Percy was miserable too, but she had never been close to Percy, and having him shut up all day long in his room was actually rather comforting, an echo of how things had been. Before.

She shouldn't have brought him here.

And they shouldn't have put him in the twins' room.

She hadn't seen it coming. She had been too uncomfortable, distracted by wanting to touch Harry and make sure he was really there, whilst the conversation shrunk towards non-existent. Before she knew what was happening, Molly had risen and told him where he was sleeping, and her parents were leaving the room, and that horrible frozen look was overtaking his features.

There wasn't any space for him elsewhere, true, even though Ron had scampered off to help retrieve Hermione's parents and Fred was dead. Bill and George had taken over Ron's old room, Charlie and Percy were in Percy's old room, which left Ginny with an especially Phlegmy bedroom and the twins' room empty.

Ginny let out a heavy sigh, but fortunately her sleeping sister-in-law did not stir. Suddenly unable to bear staying put for a second longer, she flung the covers aside and tiptoed to the door, snatching up her wand as she went.

"Lumos," Ginny whispered and winced, blinking until her eyes had adjusted to the new level of light. She proceeded to creep along until she reached the twins' room, hesitating only a half-second before entering. Harry's sleeping figure was thrown into relief by the light cast from her wand. He was, she noted, sleeping on George's old bed.

"Nox."

She closed the door quietly behind her, unsure what to do. She wanted to climb in beside Harry, but then she might wake him up, and he needed his sleep. It would be better if she took Fred's bed instead. It was silly, being afraid to use a bed or a bedroom. Fred would think it was silly. Fred wouldn't understand the mourning the Weasley family had undergone, all dark circles under eyes and muted voices and no arguments.

She swallowed tightly and sat gingerly on the edge of Fred's bed, tears pricking at the corners of her eyes. It was silly, but she did miss him. It was almost like they had lost both the twins – she hadn't seen George since after the Battle at Hogwarts.

Ginny curled up on Fred's bed, placing her wand on the table next to the bed. She didn't bother to move the sheets that remained from the last time he had slept here. The pillow smelled faintly of him, and she hugged it tightly to her, her eyes finally closing.

The next thing Ginny was aware of was a figure standing next to her bed. Her sleepy mind recognised that it must be Harry.

His back was to her, and he was tying his trainers up, bracing one shoe on the foot of the bed. She sat up, frowning, and set the pillow aside. It was morning, judging by the light streaming through the curtains. She grabbed her wand, about to leave.

"Harry, I-"

But she hadn't been the only one about to leave, by the looks of things. As she reached out a hand to him, she saw that he also had his wand in his hand. Her hand fastened around his wrist as he Disapparated.

The scene unfolded and refolded around her, but she held tight to Harry throughout. Finally, she felt as though she might be on solid ground again, although she couldn't quite make herself look up. Her hair fortunately prevented her from having to, falling very conveniently in front of her face, so she wouldn't have to explain to Harry exactly why she'd been in his room or why she'd clung to him as snugly as Lavender Brown.

Well, at least it hadn't been that snugly.

"Ginny?" Harry's voice held an incredulous note. Fortunately this was a question which required only a nod, and she performed the necessary action. Unfortunately, he was brushing her hair away from her face. She had longed for him to be this close for almost a year, but in her thoughts about this moment, she had never sketched in the blush that seemed to be spreading throughout her from top to toe, nor the fact that said blush would be especially visible because she was wearing her summer pyjamas. "What are you doing here?"

Ginny glanced around, and grimaced. Here appeared to be some sort of Muggle hive. There were Muggles everywhere – gathering in the small array of shops, walking briskly through, or staring up at some sort of box thing.

She blinked. Here was King's Cross station.

"What are you doing here?" she asked in wonder, unconsciously throwing his question back at him. She turned her head this way and that, trying to ascertain why he would have come here of all places, and completely unaware of how many looks her attire was attracting.

Harry did not, however, possess the same blissful ignorance. He cleared his throat. "Ginny, take my t-shirt," he offered, beginning to pull it off.

She snorted. "I don't think that would help," she answered, sticking her wand in the waistband of her shorts. "Then I'd be wandering around with a bare-chested man, and what would people think?"

"I'll take you back to the Burrow, in that case. Then you don't need to worry about bare-chested men at all."

She simply raised her eyebrows at him.

He managed to eventually persuade her to put his socks on, because she didn't really want to walk around barefoot, and then he wrapped an arm around her shoulders and steered her in the direction of a pasty shop. She hadn't thought to be hungry before that, and was grateful that Harry had money from his recent forays into the Muggle world to avoid being recognised.

It was only when she was half-way through the pasty that she felt it an appropriate time to repeat her question.

"Yes, I know what you asked," Harry said dryly. "It was exactly what I had just asked you."

"I came in to check on you, and ended up falling asleep on Fred's bed," she said with a shrug. "I didn't really think what was happening when I grabbed hold of you."

"Good job I noticed that you had," he said absently, his attention mostly on his own breakfast. "I can't think what your mum would have done to me if I'd brought you back Splinched. Probably something along the lines of what she'd have done to me if she'd found you in my room this morning."

Ginny shrugged. "She wouldn't have cared," she said in a hard, flat voice.

Harry pulled her closer, kissing the top of her head. "Of course she would have."

She frowned, returning to the remains of her pasty so they wouldn't have to continue upon this line of conversation. When she had finished, she asked for the third time why they were at King's Cross, of all places.

She happened to have tilted her head back to look up at him precisely as he answered, and he looked much older than nearly eighteen. The far-off expression he wore frightened her a little. "Closure," he replied finally.

Breakfast over with, they got to their feet, and Ginny waited whilst Harry glanced around.

"What are you looking for?"

"I don't know which platform it was," he replied, looking forlorn.

Which platform what was?

She decided not to press the matter, though, and laced her fingers through his, trying not to pay attention to the group of teenage boys who were shouting a barrage of lewd remarks based around her night clothes.

Harry obviously could not ignore the comments, and he strode off towards Platforms 9, 10 and 11, keeping a tight hold of her hand.

"Harry, where are we going?" she asked, taking care where she stepped because of all the broken glass on the floor. "Platform 9 3/4s is closed," she added when they reached the barrier to the Hogwarts train. "This one only opens for term time. There are other wizard platforms, though; did you need one of them?"

He wasn't really listening to her, and all of a sudden, he sank down onto a bench, covering his face with his hands. She settled next to him and folded her arms around him.

"I thought it would help," he said in a muffled voice.

"What would?" she asked gently, her face creasing in concern.

He emerged from his hands and gestured to Platform 9. "This. I don't know. This is where I was, when I – passed on. Obviously it wasn't really here, but I thought it would – I don't know," he finished, frustrated.

Ginny hesitated. They hadn't talked about what had happened at the Battle of Hogwarts, but Voldemort and Hagrid had thought Harry dead. She didn't really want to know what had happened. Ron knew, which meant Hermione probably did too, and that meant Harry had told them, but that didn't follow that he should tell Ginny as well.

"It wasn't really a platform," he said musingly. "Maybe that's it."

"Why do you want to find it again?" she enquired, her voice low. She was frightened in a way she had almost forgotten about, though it had only been a week since she had felt such fear.

He glanced up at her, and some of the dissatisfaction left his face. "I don't really," he said slowly. "I just thought it might help. It was something I'd been thinking about, and I woke up, and sort of felt I had to come here. We lost-" He coughed, and looked back down at his lap, and his next words were barely audible – "so many."

"And saved so many," Ginny said fiercely. "Do you hear that, Harry? You saved them all. You saved me."

He chuckled, spreading his fingers out on his lap. "I think your mum did that, actually."

She let herself smile at the memory. "Yeah, that's true."

"She looked like Sirius when she died. Bellatrix."

Ginny placed one of her hands on top of his, and squeezed his hand gently. "She shouldn't have taken on my mum, then," she said, unable to keep the pride out of her voice. She didn't want to let him mope over Sirius's death, not that he seemed particularly inclined to. "And Voldemort," she said, enunciating the name carefully, "shouldn't have taken you on."

He grinned. "Yeah, I think that was his big mistake. Poor Riddle."

She tried not to stiffen at the name. It recalled too many painful memories, things she had far rather forget. Harry must have noticed her tense face, because his own looked rather guilty. Try as she might, she couldn't think of any way to break the silence, which was growing steadily more uncomfortable.

"Of course, he did let me get a proper education," Harry said thoughtfully.

"What?"

"Voldemort," he clarified, and she noted the change in name with relief. "He never attacked anything close to me mid-term, and he let me do all my exams, except History of Magic, and that was sort of my fault for falling – asleep."

Ginny couldn't help but laugh outright. She hadn't really had much to laugh about lately, and even though she could tell he wasn't entirely comfortable with joking about this, she appreciated the effort. "Of course. One must ensure one's opposition is properly educated."

He snorted, slipping his arm around her again. "Yeah. Now I come to think of it, he did send me an armed escort to school this year. Knew I didn't trust the Ministry to take me, so he thought he'd offer me an alternative. Thoughtful."

"Definitely," she concurred, letting her head rest against his shoulder. "He also made sure Hogwarts stayed open, with a headmaster you were familiar with."

"And didn't bring Umbridge back."

"Doubt she would have come back anyway. Too many centaurs around. I wonder what happened to her."

Harry's arm tightened around her, and she knew without looking that the hand which was rather painfully clamped around her upper arm had 'I must not tell lies' scored into it. "Azkaban," he said, sounding grimly pleased. "She's awaiting trial."

"Good," Ginny said flatly.

Silence passed once more between them, but it was of the comfortable, companionable sort this time around.

"Will you go back to school next year?"

He paused, and she felt him shake his head. "No. I've spoken to the Auror department, and they're perfectly willing for me to train without my NEWTs. Apart from anything, I think the amount of people trying to befriend the famous Harry Potter will probably double. I already got a marriage proposal through the post from Romilda Vane."

Ginny sniggered. "Is that your way of telling me I've been replaced?"

"Yep," Harry answered, amusement clear in his voice. She imagined he was probably smiling, but she was too content in her current position to lift her head and check. "You're welcome to come to the wedding, though, as long as you promise not to make any embarrassing scenes."

"Hmm, no," she responded. "I promise to cause as much of a scene as I possibly can. How's that?"

"That sounds great," he answered. "I feel safe in the knowledge that if I ever do end up marrying Romilda Vane, the wedding at least will be a horrible embarrassment."

Ginny shifted positions, so her wand was settled more comfortably and securely against her body. "I'd say proposing over owl post is pretty embarrassing, but I think she went past feeling any form of embarrassment when she covered her dormitory in those Ministry posters of you, and charmed them to say 'Desirable No. 1'." Ginny hesitated, not wanting to say how seeing Harry's face staring down from all corners of the room had affected her. She decided to continue in the same lighthearted vein. "She probably wanted to get her proposal in first, to let you know you had options. Probably thought you'd be relieved to know you had options."

"Options," repeated Harry, stretching his legs out. "That's one way of putting it. I'm surprised that another proposal hasn't arrived whilst we've been sitting here."

She lifted her head to smile at him. "Errol's really slow sometimes, sorry."

He chuckled, running his fingers through her hair. "Ginny. I was thinking about maybe going travelling for a little bit. I have to be around for a couple of trials, and then I thought I might just take off for a little while. I'd have you back in time for school – that's if you wanted to come with me?"

She swallowed hard, not meeting his eyes. "We can't afford it."

"I can," he replied. "I've been awarded money from all quarters, more than I know what to do with, and certainly more than I deserve. Please, Ginny. I've never been abroad."

She sighed, turning her hands over in her lap. "How can I refuse a hero of the war?"

"You can't," he said smugly. "I'll never be refused anything again."

"That's what you think," Ginny informed him. "But it's now ten o'clock and Mum's certain to have noticed we're missing."

"Oh hell."

"Exactly. I'd be pretty worried if I were you. My mum's the one who defeated Bellatrix Lestrange, you know."

He cracked a smile. "I'd heard something like that. C'mon, let's go home."

She bit her lip, looking up at him as he extended his hand toward her. He looked better, happier than she had seen him in ages. Maybe it was okay that she had taken him back to the Burrow.

The Burrow too would begin to look better eventually, she knew. Maybe they didn't need Harry. Her parents had survived the casualties of the first war, after all. She needed Harry, though, and her heart lifted at the thought of spending possibly a whole month with him before returning to Hogwarts.

As she took his hand, he pulled her close and planted a kiss on her mouth.

"If you're hoping that sort of behaviour will endear you to my mother, you're mistaken," Ginny chided.

"I didn't really have your mother in mind just then," he muttered, and she grinned.

"That's good to know."