"Morning, sleepyhead"
Ginny raised her head, blearily looking up at the tray Harry held in his hands.
"Wha?"she said, brushing her hair out of her face to squint up at an entirely too awake Harry.
Harry grinned and set the tray down between them, "Breakfast! Your favourite, blueberry pancakes"
Ginny briefly wondered how it was possible to feel this happy and this gut wrenchingly sad at the same time without simply imploding.
She blinked away the unwitting tears that had sprung up in her eyes and sat up slowly, holding the sheet up to her chest.
If Harry thought her less than enthusiastic response was strange he didn't mention it, his smile steady if a little diminished.
"Oh, thank you Harry. Why..?" she said sitting up and reaching for the tray, bringing it towards her lap, idly pushing at a stray blueberry that had dislodged from the top of the stack.
Harry's smile finally fell away.
He peered at her for a minute, trying to catch her gaze, which she fastidiously avoided.
"I-",he cleared his throat, looking down at his hand that picked nervously at the sheet,"You seemed down last night, at the party…So I thought...Neville noticed it too."
"Neville?", Ginny said bristling," And why were you talking to Neville about me?"
Harry started, dismayed "I wasn't- We weren't- I told him we were leaving and he asked if you were feeling alright...Thats it Ginny. He was just concerned about you."
A surge of shame course through her entire being.
She looked at the tray, piled high with blueberry pancakes drowning in maple syrup, just the way she liked them.
Harry was trying. He didn't know why she was acting like this, why she was always cross with him and yet, he wouldn't stop trying.
He was making it so hard to hate him.
She could feel his eyes on him, in the measuring way he did. As if she was a puzzle he was trying to figure out, a riddle in an egg he didn't know where to open to even hear it, let alone solve it.
"Of course, Hermione could help him solve it. Solve us," she thought bitterly, the thought bristling across her mind like a bramble full of thorns.
Splat.
She had stabbed the blueberry with her fork so hard it had erupted, droplets smattering like blood across the white sheet.
She stared at the desolate remains of what had once been a luscious berry, shaken by the stark resemblance to the wreckage of her shattered relationship.
A perfect analogy of her own life, destroyed by her own hands. Pushing and prodding at it for years, trying to shape it into what she wanted. Isn't that why she still stayed with Harry, even after knowing for years that this relationship was not what she had imagined, that she deserved more than this half heart Harry had given her and yet, clinging on.
Because once, this had been all she ever wanted.
A life of blueberries and lazy mornings and Harry. Full of Harry and his vibrant, exhilarating love. Of Harry in her bed, in her life.
Forever.
Yet..all she felt was hollow.
"Because you know you are living a shell of a dream," a soft voice whispered in her mind,"Because you are living a fantasy, a life that could have been, that exists only because you made it. That's why it hurts so much. The pancakes stab your heart with a reminder of everything wrong. A reminder that Harry only does everything you want, always. A symbol that he never kept any room for himself,for his own desires, echoing the self-centered nature pervasive throughout this relationship."
Ginny looked around her room, their room, except.. it was more accurate to call it her room, wasn't it?
The master bedroom they had converted for their use in Grimmauld place, that they had decorated with so much love and care, had nothing of Harry in it. It was all her. The wispy white curtains she wanted, the grand, intricately carved wooden bed-set she had fallen in love with, the bright gold framed photos of their life and loved ones, the many, many posters of the Holyhead Harpies her Quidditch team that she had retired from last year, in order to settle down with Harry and begin the next phase of their life. She remembered how excited she had been. How she had felt that every single wish of her 12 year old self was coming true. Because it was. All she had to do was tell Harry she wanted to get married and have children and he would agree in a heartbeat.
"That's all he ever did," she thought brokenly,"Agree."
She was living her dream life, sitting in her dream room, with her dream man, who didn't ask for anything, didn't say no to anything.
Who was barely even alive.
Except, when he was with her.
At an exceptionally low, petty point in her life, she had found comfort on the rare occasion Harry argued with Hermione.
"Ginny! Please tell Hermione she is being completely idiotic. She needs a bodyguard for this meeting! They're vampires for Merlin's sake. How can she possibly think an envoy of unarmed ministry personnel is safe?"
"Hermione is really driving me up the wall today. She refused to listen to me about that sleaze ball who asked her out last week. She's actually going out with him tomorrow. Can you believe that?"
"I'm going to kill her. I really am. They sent her an exploding howler, Ginny! Exploding! If the security check hadn't caught it…And she didn't even tell me! I found out from Ron. I'm really going to kill her."
Of course, she had soon discovered that even that was a sign.
Harry was never cross with Ginny. Harry never got cross with anyone anymore. Not even reporters who harassed him about some details from the war or other.
But he got cross with Hermione. He worried about her, cared about her to the point that it penetrated past the protective shell he had constructed around himself in the aftermath of the war
Once brimming with vitality and raw emotion, he now existed in a state of repression and emptiness, a mere shadow of his former vibrant self, only returning for Hermione.
Ginny found herself resorting to anger and irritation every time Harry approached her with complaints about Hermione, unable to confront the harsh truth that lay before her, reacting defensively to deny its existence.
The worst part was, everyone looked at her like she had grown two heads when she mentioned Harry's irrational behaviour. Even Ron, her brother, Hermione's Ex had gawped at her, insisted that of course Harry worried, conveniently glossing over the fact that he himself barely ever mentioned Hermione's escapades even when they were together.
She had felt stuck in a warped looking glass, the world around her moving in a strange, sluggish reality, where everyone saw Harry cared about Hermione a little too much to be just a best friend and thought it was completely, absolutely normal.
It was this sense of utter dissociation from her perceived existence that her driven her to her first Mind Healer two year ago. Healer Claudia had been nice enough, professional and discreet.
However, after a few initial sessions, the Healer sensed Ginny's reluctance to divulge her true concerns, her fear of the potential fallout of her secrets being exposed amidst the sensationalism of celebrity gossip making her hesitant to truly open up. Recognizing Ginny's need for complete confidentiality, the Healer recommended seeking assistance from a Muggle therapist, someone entirely disconnected from the world of the Golden Trio and the Wizarding War, ensuring that Ginny could openly share her troubles without fear of exploitation.
"Ginny..?", Harry's voice, now highly concerned, jolted her out of her weary trip down memory lane, prompted by,of all things, a bruised blueberry.
"I have officially gone off the deep-end, as the muggles would say", thought Ginny, internally rolling her eyes.
"Ginny. Please talk to me. I- Please tell me what's wrong," Harry now grasped her elbow, desperation evident in his eyes as he earnestly looked into hers.
It broke her heart to see him like this. She could feel his fear of losing her climbing to the surface and remembered when it had given her a slightly twisted but very real sense of love, that he feared losing her so terribly much.
Except she knew now it wasn't really her he feared losing, was it? He just feared losing another person he loved.
Ginny shifted the arm he was holding on to and entwined his fingers with hers.
She raised her other arm and cupped his face tenderly, watching his eyes darting between hers.
A beat.
"I love you Harry Potter, " she whispered, drawing his face towards hers, pressing her lips to his.
She felt him tense, ready to pull back, to pursue the conversation further.
But she was tired. She didn't want to fix anything anymore. She didn't want to try.
She didn't want to talk.
She gently separated their hands and moved the tray from her lap, placing it on the bedside table, before replacing his hand on her waist. She shifted her body until she was up on her knees, her face now above Harry's as she genlty turned his head and deepened the kiss, now holding his face in both of her hands.
She felt his grip on her tighten for a second, felt his lips move, as if to speak, and she surged forwards, pressing her bare chest against his, the sheet having fallen away, and felt a primal surge of satisfaction when his grip loosened, shifting to her back and pulling her tighter against him as they fell back on the bed.
Today, she just wanted him. All of him.
Her Harry.
Before she let him go.