AN- A prompt given by Cheerful Clatter requesting something where Harry and Ginny see Cho and her husband at a memorial and decide to make their peace with each other.

Well, it is a little something like that anyway :D

Thanks for the name for this one too Cheerful Clatter!

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Closure

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She'd always hated her, the beautiful bitch. Hated that she'd been a Quidditch player since her second year, hated that she'd been so effortlessly appealing, hated that she'd been so delicate and ladylike.

And she really hated that bitch's friends. They were spiteful, holier-than-thou twats, the lot of them. Not many others saw it though.

Fourteen-year-old Ginny Weasley, given the chance and perfect opportunity, she would have done almost anything to throw down face to face with Cho bloody Chang. Just one small chance to slap the tears off her stupid face.

Maybe that could have been what would have made Harry notice her finally, then she wouldn't have had to go through that failed relationship with Dean.

It probably wouldn't have worked though.

Harry liked to save the victims.

Thank Merlin Hermione had been there to stop her when they were in their Dumbledore's Army meetings. Because fourteen-year-old Ginny hadn't been thinking clearly. She had been mad at herself for agreeing to go out with a guy she didn't fully like and she was stuck watching the guy she did fully like falling all over himself for that bitch.

The number of times Hermione had to warn her when her mutterings were getting too loud; 'Oh no, a Hufflepuff is going to walk by her, bring on the waterworks.' 'Help me, Harry. I'm a fucking useless watering pot.' Every time, good old Hermione was there to give her a nudge back to reality and out of that deep, depressing pit in her stomach that grew bigger with every look she caught Harry giving Cho.

She'd just been so emotionally wrought wishing Harry would look at her with even an ounce of the same interest.

Cho Chang was Harry's first love interest, in Ginny's mind, that bitch had stolen that from her.

Then there was that described 'wet' first kiss. Terrible or not, Ginny felt that that had been taken from her too.

Ginny's Fourth Year at Hogwarts had been terrible for several reasons, having to sit back and watch that albeit brief romance had just made it all the worse.

Everyone thought of Cho Chang as a lovely girl, smart, pretty, friendly. Ginny knew though. There were these looks that would pass between them. Because Cho knew, everyone knew, how much Ginny was longing for Harry to pay her any mind, and Cho would give her this pitying look.

When her Fourth Year had ended though, and Cho was with Michael now, there was a different look that Cho gave her; Ginny had caught Cho and Michael having a snog in one of the corridors. It hadn't been a strike to the heart to see it because Ginny just hadn't cared all that much about Michael. The look Cho gave her though. The two of them had still been kissing at the time and Cho had looked over, locked eyes with Ginny and given her a look of triumph.

That fucking cunt.

Ginny didn't give a shit if Michael had complained to Cho that Ginny was a cold fish, or that he'd known that she liked Harry the whole time she'd been dating him. But that bitch gives her a look like she'd won something by snogging Michael in front of her?

It. Was. On.

That was partly how Dean happened, and maybe a small taste of Fred and George style revenge that couldn't be tranced back to her.

Ginny knew sitting back and continuing to pine wasn't going to make Harry notice her, and it certainly wasn't making her happy at all. What she needed was some experience. A distraction.

Harry's relationship with Cho had been crap. He'd described what it was like to kiss Cho to Ron, who blabbed it to her. And from the sounds of things, they didn't do much more snogging after that. If she was going to ever offer herself up for experience for him, she'd need some herself so she actually knew what she was doing.

She and Dean though, that was pretty much all they did. He was a nice enough guy, but every time he started properly talking to her about a subject she would begin to get annoyed with him because it always sounded like she was supposed to be of the same opinion. It got to the point that if they weren't snogging, they were arguing.

And who would walk past every other time they had an argument in a public place?

You guessed it.

Cho's tears had almost completely dried up, her eyelashes had somehow gotten a bit longer, she started smiling prettily in Harry's direction a bit more again, and that expression on her face when she and Ginny locked eyes was always one of a challenge.

One night after a particularly bad row with Dean, Ginny had gone to the Sixth-Year girls dorms to vent to Hermione a bit and try to get her head on straight. She'd told her about how the fight started, how it escalated, then how Cho walked by and Ginny had just about lost her fucking mind in anger because of that look on Cho's face. The one that Ginny just didn't get. Cho and Michael weren't together anymore, Cho and Harry weren't together anymore, did Cho now have an interest in Dean? Because the way things had been going with them, Cho could bloody have him.

"I may as well just start tossing her my fucking leftovers!" Ginny finished.

"How do you still not get this," Hermione asked. "Cho is jealous of you, Ginny. She does see you as competition. You are smart, funny, pretty and a hell of a Quidditch player. Cho see's that and she's threatened by it."

Ginny's responding scoff was all her addled brain could manage.

"Cho isn't the only one who's notice either. Why do you think Dean has been getting so worked up lately?" Hermione asked.

"What do you mean? Dean is threatened by me now too?" Ginny asked her sarcastically.

"No. He's jealous of Harry, who has also come to realize all these things about you."

Ginny stared at Hermione in shock for a moment. "Fuck off!" was the only eloquent reaction Ginny could muster.

Ginny had been trying so hard to push past her feelings for Harry and just be there as a friend for him as much as she could manage, she'd missed all the signs he was giving that he might be interested in her. He had been paying more attention to her, but she thought it was just in a friendly way, like he was with Luna. She hadn't dared allowed herself to think it was anything else because she didn't want to get her hopes up again just to have them all come crashing down the minute she heard he was kissing someone else.

Then, always one to rush in at the last minute, Harry took the whole year to give her the longing looks until he finally kissed her! In front of the entire Gryffindor House!

Oh, it had been three weeks of absolute heaven. The snogging, the touching, the looks.

Merlin, the way he'd looked at her, like she was all he'd ever wanted for Christmas morning.

She'd been in a world of bliss.

Yet, every time she caught eyes with Cho she couldn't help feeling like she was a balloon and Cho was someone standing there with a needle, just waiting for the right opportunity to strike.

Three weeks.

Then the world needed its hero and there was Harry, asking to pause their relationship until the time was right to pick it back up.

Pause.

That was how she heard it. She loved him too much to think he was actually breaking up with her. She needed that 'pause' to be repeated in her head in order to sellotape the remnants of her shattered heart just enough so it would still keep beating in her chest after Dumbledore's funeral.

Then, a few hours before everyone was getting loaded onto the Hogwarts Express back to London Cho bloody Chang had sought her out in the girls bathroom. She'd made a few comments about young love and tried to sound empathetic to Ginny's situation.

They weren't the only two girls in there, you see. All her words had been chosen correctly, her tone had been just right. That look in her eye though, it said that Ginny couldn't hold on to Harry any more than Cho did.

Pause, Ginny repeated to herself in her mind, as loud as possible. Pause, pause, pause! She had her eyes closed tight and tried not to let anymore tears escape because she was stronger than that.

Pause, God-damn it!

Then she opened her eyes again and Cho was still there, looking like she'd won.

Then suddenly, Cho was on the ground, looking absolutely floored that she'd just been punched and was holding her right cheek. Cho's eyes were now filling with tears of her own, her friends were calling Ginny all kinds of names. Ginny felt worlds better though and simply walked out of the bathroom with her head held high.

She all but forgot about Cho Chang after that incident. She didn't see her on the train ride back to London and Chang had finished her final NEWT year so she didn't see her at Hogwarts the following year.

Not until the final battle.

The audacity of that bitch showing up in the Room of Requirement and looking at Harry like there was still a chance for the two of them and offering to be the one to take him to Ravenclaw to see what the Diadem looked like.

The fuck was she going to let that happen! Ginny all but screamed that Luna was going to be the one to take him. She was almost going to end that statement by launching herself across the room and giving Cho a punch to her left cheek to even it out. Harry's look was the only thing that stopped her. The slightly startled look, a twinkle of amusement in his eye.

That look held a teasing question, one that asked, 'you aren't seriously still threatened by her, are you?'

That time, when she repeated the word 'pause' in her mind, it felt more true than any other time she'd thought it.

Fast forward a few years to George's wedding. She and Harry had been together again for three years, since the morning after the Final Battle, through her going back to Hogwarts, him being in Auror Training, her being in Quidditch camps. Through distances, forced time spent apart, through it all; they'd made it. They were still excited to spend time together, they were still finding new locations to shag and positions to do it in. Now she was a bridesmaid in Angelina's bridal party and Harry was there in the front row with her parents.

Walking down the aisle toward the alter to stand beside the other bridesmaids, Ginny nearly stopped in her tracks when she noticed that familiar face in the crowd. She'd helped with the guest list and Cho Chang had not been on it, she must have come as a plus one, thus, Ginny had not been prepared to see her there.

She tried to pay attention to the ceremony, but she'd heard it all before at a few other weddings, so her eyes started drifting over to Chang and saw that that bitch was giving her a calculated looking over. Ginny knew that look, she'd given that look to several people before to try and figure out the best way to outmaneuver them on the Quidditch Pitch. If this chick thought she was going to so much as weasel a dance away from her man, then she had another thing coming.

Cho did manage it though; Ginny had been pulled away for some duty or another and came back into the tent during the reception and found Harry was dancing with her. It was a slow song and Harry had that pained look on his face that he did when he was trying to be polite. It didn't stop Ginny from wanting to run into the twins old bedroom, find a Filibuster Firework and ram it up Cho's nunny just to see what would happen.

Being the bigger person though, she waited for the song to end and cut in. She danced one song with Harry, then led him out of the marquee to find somewhere more private so she could replace that image of him and Cho with one of she and him having a good shag in a patch of darkness and trying to stay quiet enough that no one caught on.

Ginny found Cho's eye again when they got back to the tent and reveled in the expression of shock on her face. It helped that Harry was right beside her looking like a dog that had just gotten away with stealing a treat.

It wasn't much longer after they'd returned that Cho and her date left.

The next time they'd interacted it had been in the ladies toilets at the Ministry during a gala event. It really was amazing to Ginny how she'd kept forgetting her hatred for Cho until they came face to face. She never bothered giving the girl a second thought when she wasn't around, but when she was, and when Cho would give her that look that told her she would bide her time until Harry chucked her for good, it would all come back to her. All the feelings she had when she was fourteen and Harry preferred Cho over her.

Now she was armed with something else though, a reminder that it wouldn't happen; her engagement ring.

In a few months time she and Harry were going to be getting married and had even agreed to make it a bonding ritual as well. They'd been together for six years already and had seen each other at their best and at their worst and they were still in love. The bonding ritual would tie their magic together forever. Forever was exactly how long she intended to be with him, and he'd said the same to her.

Ginny's thumb went to trace that ring on her finger for assurance when she saw Cho standing at the sink looking at her in the mirror as she'd come out of the stall. Cho had a friend flanked on either side of her and gave Ginny a wide smile. It was the same one she'd had in the girls loo on her last day of school at Hogwarts when Ginny punched her.

She braced herself for whatever comment was about to come her way.

"Ginny Weasley!" Cho greeted her. "I thought I saw you and Harry earlier."

I bet you did you miserable cow, Ginny thought. "We've been here for a while," Ginny told her nicely. "I thought we'd already done the rounds to everyone. How have you been?"

What she really wanted to know was whether she'd been holed up in a studio flat crying over pictures of the men who didn't give a shit about her anymore. However, that would have been more believable if Cho wasn't still as beautiful as ever.

"Oh, forget about me. I heard you and Harry got engaged! Congratulations," Cho said as though truly happy for her. "I feel like every week I'm hearing about people I knew from school getting engaged lately," she laughed with her two friends. "Although, well, only about a quarter of them wind up following through."

There it was. Her fucking biting comment that was supposed to leave Ginny rattled. And she said it so dismissively.

These girls flanking her either side must have known what she was really saying. Cho Chang was a mean girl. A sad, pathetic, mean girl.

And Ginny wasn't going to waste any of her time with her.

If the only time she could remember thinking about Cho Chang was when she was in her presence, then she wouldn't waste her time and energy in front of her anymore.

Ginny dried her hands and went for the door. "Enjoy hanging out in the loo," she called over her shoulder as she walked through the door.

Those six words were enough to make her feel like she'd just won. She hadn't come off looking like an abrasive bitch, or jealous, or concerned in any way possible that Cho Chang could take her man.

Sure enough, as soon as she was back at Harry's side and he was giving her that adoring look of his, his way of thanking her for being there to interject into conversations and pull him away from people asking him inane or inappropriate questions. Cho was out of her mind.

Which brings us to now.

Now it was the ceremony of the tenth anniversary of The Final Battle and Harry had given in to the requests of the current Minister of Magic to say a few words at the ceremony.

And Ginny was exhausted.

All last night she'd been making sure that Teddy, James and Albus were cleaned up and their outfits for the ceremony were perfect. Harry needed her to listen to his speech a few more times, Hermione had fire-called her a few times, as had her mother, and the whole evening she'd just wanted to sit in the bath with her feet up on either side of the tap and be left the fuck alone.

She was seven months pregnant and having to go out anywhere and do anything she didn't have the energy for was exhausting to even think about. It wasn't like her feet were swollen or she couldn't manage, she just didn't want to have anything at all on her to-do list. Now she was trying to keep her three children in line behaving themselves, with the help of Andromeda, when out of the corner of her eye she saw a glimmer of perfectly coiffed and glossy black hair.

Ginny steeled herself. Her children were all on one side of her, her husband was standing by the stage area waiting to be called forward, his saved and empty seat was on her other side where Cho was heading. Nearly everyone was listening to Headmistress McGonagall, who was currently at the podium.

"What do you want?" Ginny snapped at Cho under her breath when she sat down. She didn't look at her directly, but she saw Cho flinch at the venom in Ginny's voice.

"To apologize," Cho told her, equally quiet.

Ginny did look over at her then and her brow furrowed in confusion. "If this is about to be one of your backhanded compliments then I will kindly invite you to fuck off. You see, my husband, is about to get up there and I know this wasn't something you could wrap your mind around when you were sixteen, let alone just shy of thirty now, but I'm here for his support."

There was a blush that came to Cho's cheeks and it was one of shame.

"I know. I won't be long," she assured her. "I really did just come over her to say I was sorry for how I acted with you over the years."

Ginny gave her a bewildered look. "Why?" she wanted to know.

"Well, it was because-"

Ginny cut her off there. "No, not why did you do it, I know why you did it. Why are you coming to me now? Here? This isn't exactly the moment for it."

"I would say this is exactly the moment for it," Cho told her. "It's been ten years since the Battle, thirteen since I lost Cedric-"

"Twelve since Harry and you split, yeah, thanks. I do know how time works. I've also got other things going on right now besides you coming over here for a heart to heart," Ginny cut her off again. Then there was a swell of movement in her belly and she felt the baby rolling around. She had to lean back in her chair to readjust her body and let out a slow puff of breath.

"Mum, mum, mum," Albus said from the chair at Ginny's other side and then he hugged her and rested his head on her belly so he could try to listen to his younger siblings movements.

Ginny put her arm around him in a hug, an automatic gesture that helped her blood pressure drop a bit.

"They're adorable," Cho told her. "I can't believe you have so many."

Ginny looked over at her again. "I'll give you two more minutes, Cho. After that you really can-" She stopped herself before swearing again and looked down at Albus. She and Harry were really trying to stop swearing in front of the kids. James was starting to repeat everything they said if he didn't understand the word.

"Look. I just came over here to say I'm sorry. I know I was being a bitch to you," she said the word bitch even quieter under her breath. "It's just. I was jealous. Even before he and I went out, which I barely consider us having even dated now," she rolled her eyes at herself. "I was all messed up after losing Cedric and I'd never properly talked to anyone about it. I though he and I would have connected more over it. But, we didn't. And I knew you were already a part of his world before we went out and even then I was jealous of you. When you started going out, I was even more jealous of you. I've come to realize just how badly I was behaving and my husband agreed that I needed to clear the air properly so it didn't nag at me anymore how wretched I'd been to you."

Ginny moved right past the information that Cho now had a husband and went right to the second part. "You felt bad about that?" she asked.

"Of course. I knew I was being mean, I just couldn't help it. I was so angry about things and had no one to really turn to about it. Then there was you and you were so strong and resolved and just… you. I was jealous and confused and took it out on you in a vindictive way. I just came here to apologize for that."

Ginny stared at her in shock.

She'd hated Cho Chang for years, but it hadn't weighed on her. There hadn't been a time when she was doing the dishes and a random thought about Cho popped into her head and it disrupted her mood. Here Cho said it had been nagging at her.

"Cho, I'm glad you won't be making any more sugar coated snide comments to me, but it hasn't been bugging me, if that's what you're worried about."

"It hasn't?" she asked eagerly, desperate to know that what she'd done didn't bother Ginny nearly as much as it had bothered her.

"No," Ginny shook her head. "I've got Harry and I've got three kids with another on the way. I've been pretty busy."

"I know," Cho beamed at her. "And you did an amazing job when you flew for the Harpies. I really like your articles in the Prophet as well."

"Thank you," Ginny told her sincerely. "And if you're looking for forgiveness or something, then consider this it." She leaned closer to her. "But if I find out this was a farce, or you give me another snide comment again, I'll hurt you. It might be verbally, it might be physically. Depends on how much sleep I've had or if I'm hungry."

Cho clapped a hand over her mouth to stop from laughing. "I completely understand. And Ginny, I really am sorry. You're a much better fit for him than I ever was or could have been. It just took me finding my own 'someone' to really see it." She looked over her shoulder to a man that was wearing a three-piece Muggle suit, standing by himself just out of everyone's way.

"Good looking bloke," Ginny said in appreciation.

"Yeah," Cho said dreamily as she smiled back at her husband.

Ginny was familiar with that tone of voice. It sounded like Cho had truly moved on and was now happy.

"Anyway," she said, turning back to Ginny. "Thanks for hearing me out. And I am sorry."

"It's alright now," Ginny nodded. "Although," she took Cho's hand as she was starting to get up from her seat, "I will admit I put itching powder in your Quidditch bag every chance I got while you were at practice for your last NEWT year. And I don't feel bad about it."

Cho paused and read Ginny's face to try and determine if that was true.

It was.

"Call it even?" Cho offered.

"I say that's fair," Ginny nodded. Cho got up and went back to her husband and Ginny turned back to give her youngest son a cuddle before looking back up at the stage and seeing her husband about to take the podium.

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AN- I've decided I will do a sequel to the last chapter- Conquests, this one was just done first.