Harry Potter The Beginning of the End

**A/N: Surprise! I posted a thing. **I watched _Deathly Hallows Part II_** **the other day and it inspired this fic. There's an explanation of sorts at the end if you guys need it.****

**Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling created the beautiful thing that is the world of Harry Potter, not me.**

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It is half one when Harry stumbles down to the Gryffindor Common Room sofa and the events of the Battle finally catch up to him. He can't sleep. He can't even think, really, past the steady soundtrack of _it's my fault, it's my fault they're dead_. He doesn't trust sleeping, doesn't trust that he won't have nightmares of all of them, of Remus bursting into Shell Cottage, his face joyful as he announced that it was a boy, that Tonks had given birth; of Tonks, who changed her noses at Sirius' dinner table to amuse Hermione and Ginny, and who had died holding Remus' hand; and of Fred—_Fred_—who had laughed as he died, who had left behind a twin.

There were so many _if_s: if Harry had gone down to meet Voldemort earlier, then they might not have died; if Harry had made sure that Fred was okay, or that Remus and Tonks stayed home, then maybe they would be safe; if he'd been more careful in his fifth year, then maybe Sirius would be alive; if he'd been more careful with Wormtail in his third year, then maybe Voldemort wouldn't have risen again.

There are so many _if_s, but only one _is_. Harry rubs his hand over his face and it scratches against stubble he didn't know he had.

He sits down on the sofa closest to the fire, staring into the flames. If, if, if. Voldemort is gone. His quest to kill him is over and so is his sense of purpose. All that he has left are _if_s.

There's a sudden sound behind Harry; within a second, he's turned around, his wand at the ready, facing her. _Her_. Ginny.

She's grown up too. Her eyes are a different kind of fire now, hard and angry. There's a healing gash over her eyebrow, and yet she looks entirely too beautiful to be real.

"Hey," she says, raising her hands in the air. She looks somehow smaller than she used to, more diminished. "It's just me."

He swallows, lowers his wand. "Sorry," he says, and they both know it's not just for holding her at wandpoint.

"It's alright," she responds, smiling wanly. Fakely. "Can I sit with you?"

Harry nods his assent, sitting up to give her room. "So… how have you been?" Ginny asks, trying to be casual but just sounding exhausted.

"I've been better," he whispers, voice hoarse from a mixture of fatigue and overuse. He wants to turn Ginny towards him, wrap his arms around her and never let her go.

"It's not your fault, you know," she says quietly, turning towards him. He watches as she gently takes his hand and squeezes it. "It was never your fault. None of it was."

Harry had forgotten that she has the uncanny ability to read his mind. But she's always known him, better than he knows himself. He shakes his head, looking at her. "I just keep thinking, 'what if—'"

"You can't think like that, Harry. It'll twist you up and leave you knotted, trust me," Ginny tells him. Her eyes are what he imagines his look like: wild, angry, sad. "You _saved _us, Harry. Fred—Fred knew what he was getting into. So did Remus and Tonks."

"But Teddy—"

"_Is not your fault_," she interrupts. "It's not your fault, it's Voldemort's and his Death Eaters'. You didn't kill them. I know it's terrible, and I know that it sucks that he's never going to know just how amazing and brave his parents were, but it is _not your fault_."

Harry doesn't reply. Ginny waits a few moments before she speaks again. "I'm going to go back to my dormitory, OK?" she says gently, releasing his hand. Harry watches as she starts to walk away, the warmth he didn't know she gave him disappearing.

Ginny's at the bottom of the staircase when he speaks. "Stay," he whispers, his voice cracking pathetically.

"What?" she asks, turning towards him. He knows she's heard him. She just wants to make sure.

Harry clears his throat. "Stay, please," he repeats. He's almost begging. It's pathetic.

Ginny's answering smile is near-blinding as she walks back to him, sitting down beside him closer than before. "Of course," she whispers to him. Harry's breath gets stuck in his throat.

Somehow they arrange themselves so they're lying down together, Ginny half on top of him, her head in the crook of his shoulder and his arm around her waist, legs tangled together. The guilt recedes, and if Harry tries hard enough, he can almost fill his cracks with her. He falls asleep faster than he thought possible, and neither of them have any nightmares.

They stay like that until Ron finds them there the next morning and starts shouting.

/

It's three days after the Battle and Harry has gone missing. Ginny can't find him anywhere, and neither can Ron or Hermione, even with the help of the Marauders' Map. No one can find him. He's just gone.

And then suddenly she knows where he will be. She Apparatates to Number 12, Grimmauld Place, waves aside the _Severus Snape? _Moody-Ghost and walks upstairs. And sure enough, when she opens the door to the Sirius' bedroom, she finds Harry there, on the ground in front of the window with a bottle of Firewhiskey in his hands.

He can see her in the mirror beside him. "Do you ever think about how easy it would be?" he asks, hiccupping. He's drunk, but not enough to forget everything. "To just stop. To stop everything."

She knows exactly what he means. "Yeah," she says, carefully sitting beside him. "But only easy for you, not for everyone else."

There are tear tracks cutting through the grime on his face. "They'd go on without me," he responds, snorting bitterly as he raises the bottle to his lips again. Ginny knows that this is just talk, just the words of a drunken boy who's seen too much, but it hurts, even the mere idea of it. He's gone through too much, survived too much, to even think about offing himself. And she loves him too much.

"_I _care," she says firmly, taking the bottle away from him, Vanishing it to somewhere neither of them can find it. Harry frowns at her for that. "Ron and Hermione care. My family would care. Hagrid would care. The Order and the DA would care. And that's not even counting what your parents and Sirius would think if you killed yourself."

"I'm not going to," he says thickly. "I wouldn't. I've caused enough grief already. I just thought about it."

"Don't," Ginny says. It's her turn for her voice to crack. "Please, don't."

He turns to look at her, shame suddenly twisting his features. "I won't," he whispers. "I won't. I'm sorry, Gin."

She looks at him levelly, trying to conjure that fiery girl back into her system. "You know that you can tell me. What happened, I mean. Out there. When you were away."

He looks away like looking at her pains him. "I can't." His voice breaks again, and Ginny wants to cry at the raw pain in his voice. "I'm sorry, Ginny, I can't, not now."

She's okay with that. She'd wait forever if that meant he would be okay again. "I just wanted you to know, Harry," she says quietly. She feels like she's walking on eggshells. "I'm here for you—we _all _are. You can tell me anything."

"I know. I just need some time." They both know that he's not just talking about telling her what happened. "I'm sorry."

"Stop apologizing," Ginny says, placing her hand on his arm. "It's not your fault."

"It is," Harry says, and then he's crying again, completely sobbing, the raw sounds clawing up his throat. "Merlin, it all is. All of it. I can't eat. I can't think. I can't even sleep without seeing them all again. All of them dying."

Ginny doesn't say anything, just gathers him up in her arms and lets him cry. She cries too, and he holds her like she's his liferaft. She doesn't even know what to say; she's learned from experience that words are empty. And they grieve.

/

It's four a.m. and it's Fred's funeral tomorrow and neither of them can sleep. Hermione is in Ron's room, so Harry goes to Ginny's. Ron doesn't even comment on it anymore; he knows that Harry needs Ginny.

"Hi," he says quietly when she opens the door to his knock. "I didn't know if you'd be up."

"I can't sleep," she answers, looking down at the ground. She's wearing nothing but an old t-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts that leave a large amount of freckled leg exposed. Harry has to look away.

"Me neither," he responds.

She smiles a mostly sardonic smile and steps back to allow the door to open more. "Do you want to come in?" she asks, already knowing his answer. He nods and enters her room.

He doesn't know where to sit. Ginny, however, sits easily down on her bed, pulling the sheets over her and patting the spot next to her. Harry sits down hesitantly over the covers. "Are you okay?" he asks her.

"No. Are you?" she responds, looking over at him.

"No," he answers. They've done this dance before. It's familiar.

"It doesn't seem real," she says, shaking her head. Harry catches a burst her flowery perfume and has to shake his own head to get rid of it. "Or maybe I just don't want it to be real. I don't want it to be tomorrow, not now, not ever."

"I'm sorry," he says again. He's always apologizing. He'll never stop apologizing.

"Stop apologizing," Ginny says, almost automatically. Harry doesn't say anything. Another 'sorry' waits on the tip of his tongue. "I… I just miss him so much, you know? When I wake up I still think he's alive. Every morning I have to remember that he's dead again."

And then she's crying, and Harry's trying to comfort her without knowing how, his hands brushing against her back, her crown of her head, her cheekbones. He doesn't know what to do, what to say. She lost a brother; she has cracks too.

Her sobs subside after a while and turn to hiccups. She pulls away suddenly and looks at him, a ghost of that old fiery girl in her expression. Harry doesn't know how someone can look so beautiful when they're crying. "Kiss me," she says, and he does, because she's Ginny and he's Harry and that's what was always going to happen.

Everything about her is a comforting kind of familiar, from the way her fingers knot in his pajama top to the way her hair feels as it runs through his fingers. She cries as she kisses him, and she tastes like salt. (Later, he would amusedly realize that she had become the second girl who'd cried as he kissed her.)

It's right there on the tip of his tongue, those three words. _I love you_. But he can't say it, not yet. He will, though—someday.

They kiss until Ginny runs out of tears and both of their lips are swollen. And they fall asleep the same way they did the night after the Battle, and when Hermione finds them lying there intertwined the next morning, she doesn't say anything.

Harry stays beside Ginny the entire funeral. Neither of them bring up the night before.

/

It's two months after the end of the Battle when Harry pulls Ginny aside and tells her everything, about the Ministry Break-in, about Bathilda and the snake, about Ron's leaving (to which Ginny wants to go downstairs and give Ron a good kick, and to which Harry laughs—for the first time in such a long time—and restrains her). He tells her Ron's return (Ginny harrumphs and is generally not impressed), about Xenophilius Lovegood and the Death Eaters (Ginny makes an angry sound in the back of throat that sounds oddly like Crookshanks),about Malfoy Manor and Hermione's torture (to which they both wince) and how they escaped with Dean, Luna, the Goblin, and Ollivander, and how Dobby died ("I always hated Bellatrix," Ginny says angrily, "but now I'm really happy Mum killed her."). He tells her about Gringotts, and about sneaking into the school.

Ginny tells him about her year, about the Carrows and their punishments, about the DA and what she, Neville and Luna did. Harry laughs at some of the right parts and frowns protectively at her during the other ones.

Then they sit shoulder-to-shoulder against the wall in Ron's bedroom in silence. "You've always been the bravest person I've ever known," Ginny whispers. She feels like her eleven-year-old self again.

"What about you?" Harry asks, smiling gently at her. "You led a revolution inside Hogwarts against two Death Eaters. You're bloody amazing."

"It wasn't just me," she says modestly. "I had Neville and Luna and the rest of the DA to back me up."

"Same for me," Harry responds. "I had Ron and Hermione to help me. And you and the DA."

Ginny snorts. "I was most likely hundreds of miles away from you, Potter. How could we have helped you?"

Harry squirms. "Just, erm, mentally and stuff," he says, looking down at the laces of his trainers. "Just knowing you guys were supporting me. And that you were alive."

Ginny fights back a smile. "Me or the DA?" she asks coyly, watching his cheeks turn red. She's enjoying it a little too much.

"Both," he answers. "But mostly just you."

Ginny wants to dance around like a barmy idiot. Throw on some Weird Sisters and scream the lyrics out the window. She feels like she could fly without the help of a broomstick. It's bad—she's in way too deep (but then again, she always was with Harry).

"I want to take you out somewhere," Harry suddenly says. "Like, to an actually place."

"Is that so?"

"Yeah," Harry says, looking at her and smiling again. She's really happy to see this side of Harry, the old one, the pre-war one. "We never did get to go on a proper date, you know. We should do that."

Ginny hates to squash his hopes, but, well. She's a realist. And they don't have much time; she and Hermione have to leave for Hogwarts in a few weeks. "I reckon that'd be lovely, Mister Potter, but you're kind of a celebrity in the Wizarding World now, and I don't think we could go out to a 'place' any time soon." She makes those air-quote things around 'place' just to tease Harry.

Harry visibly deflates. "Well… we could go to the field behind your house, maybe. I could ask your mum to pack us a lunch."

"How romantic," Ginny teases him. "What a catch. You really know how to spoil a girl, Harry Potter."

Then she stops, wondering if she's said too much too soon. But then he rolls his eyes at her and she knows it's okay.

"We can do it the weekend after next. That should be enough time to plan, and by then, hopefully Ron will be preoccupied," he muses, making a face. Ginny sympathizes with him—she's run into Ron and Hermione in compromising positions just as much as Harry has. She's taken to covering her eyes and shouting, "OI, LOVEBIRDS! YOU BETTER HAVE YOUR CLOTHES ON!" before entering any room they're in.

"Urgh," Ginny says aloud, which she reckons sums it up well. "I mean, how much time does it take to say goodbye, for Merlin's sake?"

Harry shakes his head. "I dunno. I'm just really glad that they weren't together when we were on the run. There was only one bedroom."

Ginny winces. Neither of them says anything for several moments.

"I'm going to miss you when you go back to Hogwarts," Harry says quietly, once again staring down at his trainers.

"I'll miss you too," Ginny says, and she means it, not just because he helps with the nightmares and everything else that comes along with them. "But there's always Hogsmeade weekends. And Christmas and Easter."

"I know," he says, but he doesn't look any more comforted.

/

It's two months and two weeks after the battle and two days till Ginny goes back to Hogwarts and Harry has to say it. They went on their date, which was better than that day by the lake in his Sixth Year and he has to say it.

He doesn't even know when they started kissing. Or when they snuck upstairs to Ginny's bedroom undetected. But she is gorgeous and fiery and warm and better than any type of alcohol known to wizard-kind, and he is bursting with those three words and something that feels damn like happiness.

He didn't even know it is possible to laugh when snogging, or for someone to have both too little and too many clothes on at the same time. But it is. Harry is learning many things—most of all, that he can still love.

They are one and the same, and he needed time. But he doesn't want time anymore, just Ginny. She filled his cracks and he hers. He talked and she listened. She cried and he comforted. He gave her safety and she quieted the noise in his head. And he _has_ to say it.

So he does, pulling away from her just enough to be able to resist the temptation of kissing her again.

Ginny arches an eyebrow just enough to let Harry know she's impatient. "What?" she asks, her expression quickly turning concerned. "Is this too much?"

Her lips are slick and swollen, her cheeks flushed and eyes bright, hair mussed into a fiery halo. She is a beautiful mess, a dangerous siren. It literally takes every ounce of Harry's willpower not to forget it all and kiss her again.

So he takes a breath, careful to avoid looking at her lips, and, well, the parts of her that are semi-undressed, and opens his mouth. "I love you."

Her eyes widen. Harry waits, terror gripping him, thinking that he overestimated her and her affection for him. But then she smiles, and she is more beautiful than any other side of Ginny he's ever seen before (even the mussed post-snog Ginny). "I love you too."

And they are okay.

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**So, an explanation: **

**Basically, I've had a headcanon for a while that once the whole Wizarding War was over, Harry would have a lot of emotional problems to deal with. Like, he'd seriously have to figure himself out like he never has before - throughout the last book, it seems like Harry's main goal and motivation to keep going is killing Voldemort, and now that Voldy has gone mouldy (yes, I really did say that, I know, I'm not funny), Harry would kinda feel lost and have to deal with all of his suppressed emotions, all at once. He'd probably develop severe depression and maybe even PTSD. And because of that, I also don't think Ginny and him would get back together right away, because a) I don't think Harry really has the capacity to be in a relationship right away, and b) I don't think that either of them are ready for a relationship right away. So yeah. That's about it.**

**~dontforget2live (aka Alex) :) x**

**P.S. if you have a tumblr, FOLLOW ME PLEASE. Because I am occasionally funny and I post things there and yeah. My url is abundantmetaphoricalresonances. **


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Harry Potter, Angst, Romance