It’s easy enough in the beginning. Maybe that’s because it’s still just after the war, when everything in her has burnt out and been left hollow. She can’t bring herself to care – she can’t even think. It’s just too much and too little of her is left.

So instead, she fights Draco Malfoy.

It doesn’t start that way. In fact, it is far from that. She doesn’t see him for the entire summer until school begins again. They cope separately, differently. He faces trial with his family and they only just escape Azkaban under heavy parole for their defection of sorts right at the end. The government seizes most of their fortune for repairs, but they somehow manage to hang onto Malfoy Manor. Draco does community service – working hard for days on things that could have been handled in moments with a simple spell. That is the point, it is meant to teach him a lesson. He is probably resentful and doesn’t learn any lesson at all, but months later he doesn’t speak about it much so perhaps he did after all.

Ginny spends her summer in apple trees. She avoids the rest of her family, even George. Instead, she sits up in her secret spots and stares at tree trunks. Halfway through the summer, she spends two days methodically using a pocketknife to scrape away every bit of the heart-encircled HP + GW she had written up there four years ago.

She then spends two weeks on a new carving, digging deep into the wood until the sides of her fingers are scratched and eventually blistered, and she’s glad when no one notices because she wouldn’t have let them heal her anyway. In the end Ginny figures she’s managed enough that it won’t fade any time soon. When it starts to heal, she’ll just have to come carve it in again, and again, and again until the tree catches on and scars it in permanently. For the time being she contents herself with eating a fresh apple in small bites and using her other hand to trace the deep grooves in the wood. She’s satisfied at how deep they are when her pinky-finger gets caught in one and she gets splinters tugging it out.

She closes her eyes, drops the apple, and traces the lines again and again until she wakes up. Her back is sore and the sky is lit up with brilliances that she never learned properly in Astronomy, and for the first time since everything had ended, something tries to prick at the corner of her eyes. She stares hard at a particularly dim star until the urge fades.

After that night, Ginny thinks about living in the Burrow for longer than meals and sleep, but when Ron catches her arm and tries to give her sympathy eyes, she wrenches away and walks off very quickly until she finds herself hugging her knees under her favorite apple tree, a fallen and half-rotten apple very close to her right big toe.

She can’t help but think that if this were a story, George or possibly Percy would follow her and sit down next to her and they would just sit in silence and – commune, or something idiotic like that. It would probably be a healing process. Instead it gets cloudy, rains, and Ginny catches a bad sneeze.

She doesn’t see George or Percy or anyone else more than ten times in all the months, and on reflection she’s actually rather glad.

That is the summer.

__~*~__

School is different – subdued, or at least it seems so to Ginny. But then McGonagall’s welcome speech is over and noise erupts from everywhere and Ginny remembers –

Oh. Life goes on.

There are a few dozen people who talk to Ginny that first night, but none of their faces last in her head because she is too busy remembering the ones who aren’t there. Which is stupid because most of them wouldn’t have been here tonight anyway, but there are some, most of whom she doesn’t know but one she remembers for certain.

It’s stupid. She hasn’t spoken to him in a long while – not properly, at least, since the really rather mortifying Harry Potter Club back when they were little children. But she remembers him now, him and that stupid Muggle camera of his, and Ginny feels the loss of Colin Creevey deep in her bones.

She gets up abruptly and leaves the room. Ginny wanders aimlessly, truly aimlessly, for hours. The thought of going to bed doesn’t even occur to her until a painting scolds her for breaking rules, and then she decides not to anyway; she isn’t listening to anyone these days.

Eventually, daylight finds her sitting on some stairs she thinks are in the East Wing. A vanishing step caught her left ankle and even though she should be able to magic her way out, she doesn’t bother. Instead, Ginny just sinks down and puts her head on her knees. She stares hard at the flagstones her foot disappears into and wishes she were in her apple tree.

That is how Draco Malfoy finds her. This is where it begins: they don’t talk, but he hoists her free one-handed and Ginny meets his eyes for a second or two.

It’s easy to fall into step together, mostly because Draco has deep circles under his eyes and he looks every bit as aimless as she.

__~*~__

Ginny sleeps the next night, but it is fitful, and then she is wandering the castle again, this time in the light of the rising sun. She thinks about Percy and almost wants to write him a letter, but when she finally gets to the Owlery she remembers letting Pig stay home and it wouldn’t be right without him, and besides there is a nervous-looking fourth-year trying to pretend his cheeks are dry in the corner. So instead Ginny visits the first-floor girls’ bathroom because no one is ever there and she won’t be interrupted.

She opens the door to Draco Malfoy saying “I agree,” in a voice that is almost warm and Moaning Myrtle not moaning. In fact she’s smiling and giggling like a besotted little girl, until she sees Ginny and then the smile drops from her face in a second.

The next second she is swooping backwards in a sort of somersault and there is a loud splash; Draco absentmindedly takes a strategic step to the left, where the resulting flood of water somehow just misses his shoes. Ginny’s get wet.

Myrtle is moaning long and loud and saying very nasty things as she swoops back out of the toilet to properly glare at Ginny. She hovers very close to Draco, her arm almost in his shoulder, and Ginny watches the two with dead eyes for a moment.

“Sorry,” she says in a cracked voice, and as the door swings shut behind her again she can hear Myrtle giggling like a vicious thing this time, and then Draco cuts her off with her name, “Myrtle,” somehow reproachful, and she stops and Ginny can just see her hovering so close, eyes on Draco, not touching him because she’ll go through.

Ginny doesn’t want to think about that. It’s too sad.

She finds a tapestry to sit behind and presses her closed eyes into her knees until the sockets ache and lights dance across the inside of her eyelids. Then she does it some more until someone rushes past her and knocks her over.

The girl (Hufflepuff, and probably not much older than Ginny even if they don’t recognize each other) apologizes over her shoulder but doesn’t stop, but Ginny does frown and remember that she has class now.

Flitwick looks at her with sympathetic eyes when she walks in twenty minutes late without any supplies, feet leaving wet prints behind her; he doesn’t dock points, and something monstrous wells up in Ginny’s stomach and threatens to spill over.

__~*~__

That is not the only difficult class this year. The seventh years from last year all had to repeat, so the two years are all mixed up and strange things happen. Ginny dislikes being in the same Herbology class as Ron but at least Luna is there too. She doesn’t seem to have changed, not really, and Ginny loves her for it. She distracts Ron without even trying, and Ginny pots in silence, and escapes as soon as she can.

There’s a new teacher for both DADA and Potions; both nice enough, both bland, at least compared to the previous teachers to fill those positions. Ginny hates them. She also hates to admit it, but she misses Snape. The old bat was a steady presence even in the worst of things, and even if he always hated her, she resented him the way you would an annoying uncle, for the most part. No, that was a bad comparison, because Ginny had never in any way liked him – but he was as much a part of Hogwarts as Dumbledore and – and that was all.

All summer Ginny had wanted desperately to go home. It’s scary to realize that she still does, because after here there is nowhere left.

__~*~__

Halloween comes and goes. Ginny passes up the party in favor of trying to see how deep the dungeons get. It is cold and damp and labyrinthine, and she gives up after three hours.

It takes her four hours to get back to the Gryffindor dormitory, by which time almost everyone is asleep. There’s a lot of candy in the common room. The fire is warm and inviting, as are the chairs; they seem to have gotten cozier somehow. There are games lying out on the floor where someone was too lazy to pick them up.

Ginny looks at it all for a minute, then turns around and walks right back out. She’d rather sit in a hidden passageway listening to the paintings in the next hallway gossip than this.

__~*~__

There is a constant blank cloud of space. It’s usually situated over next to Ron and Hermione, but sometimes it drifts away, wanders up to Ginny, and mocks her gently. It whispers promises and she hates it so much, she wants to destroy it like the bark on that tree – but then she pauses. She thinks about how it’s empty space, how she dreams it up all by herself, and then she considers Moaning Myrtle and Nearly Headless Nick and that sick feeling comes back into her stomach.

She thinks she’s developing ghost allergies. Whenever one comes close, she shudders as her mind flashes to that look in Myrtle’s eyes, the way she didn’t quite touch.

Ginny falls asleep sitting wrapped up in a little ball outside the door to what was once the Room of Requirement. When she wakes up she’s in her own bed with a hot water bottle by her feet, and something new occurs to her.

__~*~__

It seems that no matter where Ginny goes, Draco has thought of it first. He’s hunched up in a corner with a piece of untouched lemon meringue pie and a half-empty cup of coffee when she enters the kitchen, and she bites her lower lip.

Their eyes meet.

And then there is a buzzing all around her, a blank space larger than life, because the house-elfs are all quiet and polite and not one of them wearing clothes. They look no different from before the war.

When Ginny steals some of Draco Malfoy’s coffee, there is a harsh burning in her throat that makes her cough. He slaps her on the back once, hard, then removes his fingers.

“Firewhiskey?” Ginny croaks, and he shrugs.

“None of your business,” Draco says like he would have said before everything. And that – that makes an unexpected smile crawl across her face. So Ginny accepts the challenge, grabbing the mug and drinking as much of it as she can in one gulp.

Her head feels like it’s on fire but she begins to think that’s not all bad when she meets Draco’s eyes over the table and he scowls, then smirks.

“More,” he says, not looking away, and Ginny thinks –

Yes. I can do it too.

__~*~__

The next morning she wakes up with a heavy headache and it hurts so much that she has stumbled into breakfast before she remembers anything, and even then it’s a sharp pain interrupted by the throbbing dull one already in her head, not enough to focus on.

Ginny thinks that now she understands people who self-mutilate.

That’s not to say that she starts herself, of course. She understands the idea, just like she understands why some might become addicted to Pleasure Potions, but the practice of it is just too stupid for her, knowing the consequences. However, she does think about this reaction, and then remembers Draco Malfoy, and wonders.

Confronting him is easy in a way nothing else has been yet, and she remembers that moment when she smiled at him. No, not at him, but at what he was doing, how he was so different from everyone else.

They all pretend nothing happened. He knows it did, but even though his allies killed her brother, he still scowled at her and mocked her last night, just like before.

And when Ginny attacks him on the premise of alcoholism, he laughs like there’s no tomorrow until she feels thoroughly stupid. But also like the thought has occurred, been considered, and been firmly rejected. Like she would have laughed if Ron or Hermione had come up to her after breakfast.

Ginny leaves the meeting stomping, glaring, and occasionally exclaiming her anger to the walls. She fumes through class and is only brought back to herself when Ron sits across from her at lunch and makes the truly stupid comment that she’s almost acting like herself again.

Hermione kicks him under the table but Ginny would have left abruptly anyway. The buzzing empty space has decided to settle down next to her. It places an arm around her shoulders and commiserates about Malfoy, that git, and her eyes hurt at the corners. She doesn’t run, but walks quickly out of the Great Hall and down around the lake.

There are still burn marks on the trees.

Ginny might have broken then and there if that most hated Draco Malfoy didn’t emerge from the castle and begin walking around the lake in the other direction. Instantly she plans retorts for when their paths will eventually cross, and lets loose at him with such viciousness upon their meeting that he’s actually speechless for half a moment.

Then he volleys back just as well and Ginny finds her own addiction.

__~*~__

The weeks pass swiftly after that.

__~*~__

She stays at school for Christmas break without consulting anyone. Ron doesn’t seem to notice because he’s too busy trying to convince Hermione to kiss him goodbye for the entire train ride. The school gets quiet and empty and even if Draco is gone too, she spends her days with textbooks in the library, getting ahead on homework and studying for her N.E.W.T.s, or building expansive card houses by the fire in the common room. For a while Ginny really thinks she likes it, throwing away unopened the letters her mother sends her.

Then just before Christmas Ginny receives a note from McGonagall that she can’t ignore and as she walks slowly up to the Headmistress’s office she feels like a bubble is breaking.

She hasn’t been getting bad grades, except in Charms and DADA mostly, where her quiet refusal to actually perform any magic is not made up for by well-written essays. This, in conjunction with the way several of her friends say that Ginny is being distant, is worrying, McGonagall says. She follows up with a lengthy talk about memories and pain and even trauma, but how everyone can only move forward and this break from school will be a good time to start practicing again. Ginny listens, responds, and legitimately agrees.

Then, when she is released from the office, she stands outside for a moment debating strongly within herself. There aren’t actually any apple trees at Hogwarts, she’s checked, and it would be too cold to go outside anyway. It snowed earlier.

So instead, lump rising in her throat, Ginny begins to walk, then walk faster, and then finally she just runs without thinking. Through hallways, down stairs, in hidden passages and dashing into rooms only to spin on a heel and run away a second later, she runs and runs until finally she has to stop because she can feel her heartbeat in her cheeks and her breath is too fast to catch.

When she can, she runs some more, but the search is fruitless (as she knew it would be). In the end, shaking, she walks into her last resort. It is the first-floor girls’ bathroom, and Ginny screams when no one is there, not even the bloody ghost. She kicks at the puddles on the floor and yells and hits all the stall doors open, but she is still alone and eventually she sinks down onto a toilet seat and puts her head in her hands.

She clenches her teeth and tries to ride it out, but the space around her starts buzzing in her ears and filling up, too much. There is no way that many people could fit in here with her, but they all do, whispering to her and pressing in and in and in until she can’t breathe again and she lifts her head quickly.

She is alone. The room is still empty.

__~*~__

The next day Ginny goes on a ghost hunt.

It takes her a while, but eventually she comes across one she doesn’t at first recognize. It’s in the middle of slipping off through a wall and Ginny shouts, “Wait!”

When she gets close enough, she finds herself face to face with the tall and regal Grey Lady, and she grins. A Ravenclaw can help her out, surely.

The Grey Lady looks at her questioningly, but doesn’t say a word. Ginny doesn’t think she’s ever heard her voice, and hopes that the ghost has one. “I wanted to ask you a question,” she says.

The Grey Lady continues to look at her, so Ginny takes that as an offer to listen. “I – I’ve been wondering…” she says slowly. “What makes a person become a ghost?”

The Grey Lady does not speak.

“I mean – I know they have to die in a violent way!” Ginny insists. “And, I know they have to have some sort of emotional reason, right, I know what’s in the books. But – but I’ve been wondering why there were no ghosts after the war – you know? There were.”

She stops. Swallows. The Grey Lady says nothing.

“There were a lot of casualties,” Ginny says, concentrating. “But I haven’t seen one ghost. And I know Moaning Myrtle died from a basilisk, and there were plenty of more violent deaths than that, and I know they had emotional reasons, plenty. So why aren’t there any ghosts from the war?”

The Grey Lady is silent.

Then she says: “Would you prefer it if there were?”

She drifts away through the wall immediately after and Ginny yells after her, “Weren’t their feelings worth it? Did they just not care enough? Why isn’t anyone left? Wait!”

The Grey Lady is gone.

But her question fills Ginny’s head: Would you prefer it if there were?

So Ginny thinks.

She remembers so many people, so many dead, thinks about Colin Creevey floating around, taking pictures that never would develop. Fred haunting his joke shop, trying his hardest to rival Peeves, pale next to his brother. A Death Eater – Bellatrix Lestrange, following students around the castle, whispering nasty things in their ears. Others –

Moaning Mrytle, hovering but not touching. That empty space, not buzzing, not clear, but opaque and still empty, unchanging and everlasting and sad. And parents wondering, wishing, thinking ‘why isn’t my child coming back? Why wasn’t she worth it?’

No. Ginny would not prefer it.

But she will still wonder.

__~*~__

It’s a new year.

The other students have returned, class has begun again, and Ginny gets a thorough lecture from Ron. Her mother has not yet sent her a Howler, but Ginny expects that it’s only a matter of time. A very short time, judging by the colour of Ron’s face.

“I know how you feel,” he shouts, “but this is ridiculous, Ginny! You can’t just –”

He does not in fact stop there, but she does get up and leave. “Look,” she says. “I’ll write Mum back, okay? Just leave me alone already!”

She only gets halfway to the Owlery.

__~*~__

Draco Malfoy glares, Ginny remembers running and running hopelessly, and she – overreacts.

“I hate you!” she screams, and somehow – five minutes later, she has her wand out.

She doesn’t even realize until Draco snatches up his own, looking angry and even betrayed. “Watch it, Weasley,” he says. “Don’t think a Bat-Bogey is going to get me now.”

“You bastard,” she says, but she is already losing steam. And possibly the contents of her stomach, because it’s churning. She drops her wand. “I hate you so much.”

She is not crying, she knows that much – but she isn’t in great shape either, and she ducks her head to stare at the floor.

“You know what’s strange?” Draco says slowly, lowering his wand. She can see it in the corner of her eye. “Well, aside from you.”

Ginny snorts. Her wand has fallen into a groove in the floor, fitting like it belongs there. It looks like just a piece of wood, an overgrown twig, like it would break if she stepped on it. She knows it wouldn’t.

Draco Malfoy bends down and picks it up, but he doesn’t give it back to her. Instead he just looks at it.

He says: “I don’t actually hate you. Wouldn’t you call that strange?”

Ginny blinks at the floor. Everything’s quiet for a minute.

Then she looks up and snatches her wand out of his hand. “Yeah. Yeah, I would.”

They walk away in different directions.

__~*~__

Ginny performs a less than perfect Concealment charm in class the next day. Flitwick beams and tells her it is ‘splendid, just wonderful!’.

“Thanks,” she says to him. “I know it’s not really.”

__~*~__

February 14th, Ginny receives a Valentine.

She still isn’t the most social girl in the school, but she has been talking to people more since New Years. Apparently it has been enough to inspire interest in her from someone in her own year for once: not a great hero from the war since his parents had him locked up at home, Hufflepuff Tom Benton is relatively nameless. Unknown.

She kind of likes that about him.

Ginny does consider turning him down, but it’s been a long time and… maybe this is what she needs. So she ticks off the ‘yes’ on the note and watches it fly gleefully away. She smiles to herself and takes a bite of the chocolate that came with it, which is really quite good.

Ron and Hermione are staring at her. She ignores them and they eventually stop.

__~*~__

Ginny is frustrated, because she waited for an hour and no one showed up. She admits she wasn’t extremely interested in Tom, but she was willing to try, and him not showing doesn’t help matters. It brings up doubts, like was he only interested in her because of the limelight? Was he too intimidated to actually date her, was it just a dare to even ask her? Maybe unknown is not so good after all.

When she stomps back into the Gryffindor dormitory, it is to find Ron arguing hotly with Hermione. She opens the portrait to the tail-end of his sentence.

“…it’s been less than a year Hermione! She can’t just be over him!”

“Maybe being over him isn’t what she needs, Ron! You had no right to interf– ”

They notice Ginny.

She stares at Ron for a long time. Colour slowly rises in his cheeks, right up to his ears.

“You’re both sort of right,” she says. “It wasn’t any of your business, but… If he let you get in his way then he wasn’t worth the trouble. Thanks, Ron.”

She casts the Bat-Bogey Hex at him and leaves with a little smile. It’s the first time she’s cursed someone in months and it feels sort of good, preferable to a date she wasn’t eager for anyway.

Mostly because she can hear Ron’s yelps all down the hallway, and it doesn’t sound like Hermione is helping.

__~*~__

It’s a mild winter, and gets warm enough by early March for Ginny to spend most of her time outside, so she does. She mostly just walks around for hours, looking at everything.

The trees are scarring. None of them have apples.

And Draco Malfoy is everywhere.

__~*~__

Ever since he told her that he didn’t hate her, things have been a little odd between Ginny and Draco. Perhaps it’s because he ruined her little fantasy, that things between them at least had not changed. Perhaps because if she thinks about it too long she’s going to have to consider if she actually hates him.

Either way, there are a few awkward moments. And since they seem to run into each other often, ‘a few’ really means ‘quite a lot’.

They don’t really argue anymore, and Ginny misses it. Instead, they throw half-hearted barbs at each other and then quickly move on their way, and they have done so for almost two months.

Ginny is the one who eventually breaks the routine, and she thinks she only does so because insomnia still plagues her and she hasn’t slept in almost three days.

They are in the Owlery. It is five in the morning.

“I haven’t written home at all this year,” Ginny says abruptly. She had planned to ask if Draco always got up this early, but then she already knows the answer. He has had bags under his eyes for longer than she can remember.

Draco blinks at her, and it takes him a long time to catch on, but eventually he resumes tying his letter to a proud-looking eagle owl’s leg. It belongs to him, not the school. “I’ve been writing every week,” he offers.

Ginny frowns. “Haven’t you always done that?” She remembers lots of eagle owl-carried packages arriving at the Slytherin table throughout the years – not all the time, but frequently enough

Draco swallows. “Not since first year.” He finishes tying the letter, but doesn’t let the owl go, stroking the top of its head.

Ginny doesn’t have a letter. She has paper and a quill, but she hasn’t been able to get further than that, and even being in the Owlery has not been helpful. She reaches out hesitantly, resting her fingers next to Draco’s. The owl is in perfect shape, its feathers glossy, soft, and smooth.

“You have a lovely owl,” she says. “What’s her name?”

“Aquila.”

The name is vaguely familiar, but it takes Ginny a while to place it, and the owl shifts uncomfortably under her strange fingers. Ginny steps back. “Hey, isn’t that – ”

Draco scowls. “Yes, a constellation. The Eagle; fairly simple really, her being an eagle owl. But we like naming things after constellations. Or – mother’s family, the Blacks. Not my father’s parents.” He looks vaguely uncomfortable, and stops talking abruptly, going to release the owl out a window.

Ginny is smiling when he turns around. “My mum told me once that we Weasleys all get named after people from the Arthurian legends. You know, like Guinevere – Ginevra, and stuff like that. Though I don’t think we’ve ever done it with our owls.”

Draco pauses. Then he shrugs; smirks. “I was ten. It was easy.”

Ginny rolls her eyes.

She doesn’t write the letter that day, but she doesn’t feel like it matters quite as much for once.

__~*~__

Ginny gets eggs for Easter, like always. Ron and Hermione didn’t go home this time, she notices.

There is a note, but she doesn’t read it.

__~*~__

April. Only two months left of school. She hasn’t gotten a Howler.

Ginny finds an unused classroom to study in every day, and when she gets out she always visits the kitchens for a snack. The house-elfs are exactly the same as they were six months ago, which is to say, the same as they ever were.

At some point, Draco Malfoy starts showing up. They sit together, but there’s no firewhiskey and not much arguing, although they do sometimes talk. It’s… relieving, after all the hours of effort studying and avoiding Ron.

Ginny doesn’t ever tell anyone else about meeting Draco, but she’s not sure if that means anything. She doesn’t tell them much at all.

__~*~__

It’s been a few weeks. Draco looks at Ginny and says, “Have you owled yet?”

When she shakes her head no, he stares at her for a while. She feels persecuted, but she still hasn’t gotten a Howler. Just letters, and she doesn’t even remember how often she gets them now. She throws them away without looking at the handwriting.

But Draco stares at her. And she can’t meet him in the eyes, and then she suddenly says, “There’s a Hogsmeade trip this weekend.”

Draco blinks. She knows why. The Slytherins are not popular at all these days, even though at least half of them had nothing to do with Voldemort. Professors make an effort to be impartial, but they still aren’t winning many House Points at all, and the Quidditch field hasn’t been used in a long time. They’re still waiting until everyone’s ‘back on their feet’ academically before starting up sports again, especially since they tend to only increase House rivalry.

Hogsmeade was targeted during the war, there’s no denying that. And Hogsmeade remembers. It remembers the Death Eaters, it remembers the torture and Forbidden Curses, and it is not particularly forgiving. Individuals might be, but the town as a whole is not welcoming, and Slytherins know not to bother going there unless they are in groups.

Draco hasn’t been seen in a group in a while. People know him specifically.

Ginny doubts he has been to Hogsmeade since he tried to kill Dumbledore. But she tells him anyway, because she doesn’t want to talk about letters any more. She says, “I’m going to go. You should come.”

She doesn’t say anything else about it. Doesn’t think about the repercussions of publicly walking around Hogsmeade with Draco Malfoy. Doesn’t think about what the act of asking him means. Doesn’t think about why she’d want to go to Hogsmeade in the first place.

She doesn’t. Doesn’t want to, doesn’t have to, doesn’t.

__~*~__

Hogsmeade is exactly like Hogwarts.

Ginny hates it.

Everything is bright and it all makes a strong effort to be normal, but instead of scars on the trees there are shops still under construction, streets still taped off. It’s been almost a year and the last remnants of all the dark magic is just fading away. It’s horrific.

But there are still all the shops, and the butterbeer is good. Ginny only drinks one though, because Draco didn’t actually come with her and she doesn’t want anyone else to try to join her.

She tells herself that she is not disappointed. It’s not quite working until she catches sight of Zonko’s and is distracted. Because Zonko’s is not Zonko’s anymore. It is the upcoming second branch of Weasleys’ Wizarding Wheezes, not yet open.

Not yet open, but the ostentatious sign is up and the apostrophe is still after the ‘s’.

Ginny feels sick and decides to go back to the castle.

__~*~__

May arrives too quickly. May 2nd even quicker.

Ginny has no doubt that in the future this is going to be a holiday. People are probably already celebrating the anniversary. But for now at least, they do it in private, and Hogwarts holds a memorial ceremony down by the lake.

Ginny almost wants to hurt someone for that, but she already knows that there aren’t any apple trees.

She also knows what to expect, and she is already hiding when the clock strikes three a.m. She does not want to talk today, not to Ron or Hermione or anyone.

Except, she didn’t realize it. But at some point, she has gotten less numb or at least more sleep because she can’t sit and stare at her knees all day no matter how much she wants to. She can’t concentrate on studying, either.

Mid-afternoon, Ginny gives in and goes to the kitchen. She is hungry.

And Draco is there.

__~*~__

The N.E.W.T.s have been a constant shadow hanging over this year, but now they have emerged and are looming on the very near horizon. Two weeks left to study and practice, and Ginny feels horribly listless.

She will take them. But she doesn’t know what she’s going to do with them – the future is so far out of her grasp that even thinking about it gives her a headache.

Hermione can be seen every day in the common room with a stack of books higher than she is tall. Ron is with her whenever he isn’t trying to relieve stress by challenging anyone he can to a game of wizard chess.

Draco seems to be studying much the same way Ginny does; with enough effort but little true investment. She gets the impression that the Malfoys have managed to save more money than most people might think, and he may never have to get a job if he doesn’t want to. It doesn’t surprise her.

They still meet most days, though it’s not always in the kitchen anymore. Sometimes they will be outside, and once Ginny shows him the classroom she has claimed, Draco moves his own books in there. It is quiet and private and a perfect place to study.

It might seem like a great – and unlikely – friendship. But they almost never talk, so Ginny tells herself it doesn’t count.

__~*~__

She thinks she did well, which is what Ginny tells Draco when he asks. At least, she thinks she passed three or four subjects, which is good enough for her.

“Why?” she says, and he shrugs.

“It would be just like a Weasley to get held back in their last year,” he says, and before she can point out that technically, he is right now, he adds something else. “I think you should owl.”

Everything pauses.

Ginny looks down. “I don’t want to,” she says.

She can feel Draco looking at her. They are in their classroom, and it’s been getting warm. His sleeves are rolled up, but not all the way. She knows why.

He sounds angry when he says: “Don’t lie to me.”

He sounds angry. Ron does too, but Ginny walks away from Ron. But Draco is alone with her in this small room and it feels like he has been all year, and she can’t walk away from him.

He makes her look at him.

His eyes hurt. They aren’t glaring at her, even though he sounds angry. They can’t glare. They’re washed out and they still have bags under them. They’re like hers.

“They never sent me a Howler,” Ginny suddenly wails, and her eyes hurt. “Not one of them.”

Draco walks in close and hits her on the side of the head, not hard. “Merlin, only a Weasley would be upset by that.” He looks at her, and he’s still not glaring, but his eyes hurt hers and she wants to look away.

“Just send your mum a bloody owl already,” he says softly, and Ginny’s throat closes up.

When she takes in a breath, it is sharp and out of her control, and suddenly she feels like she is leaning on Draco and he might drop her. “I don’t have an owl,” she tries desperately. “I don’t have Pig and I can’t –”

“You can use Aquila,” Draco says. “I’ll skip a week.”

Ginny’s fingers flutter in the air – they hesitate for almost too long, not-quite-touching like a ghost, like Moaning Myrtle in the first-floor girl’s bathroom, but.

They make it. They grab onto his arm, on her right and his left, right where it’s still covered by the cloth, and they grip on hard. Draco winces.

And then Ginny feels like her face is going to crumple to nothing unless she does something, so she presses it forward hard. Her forehead is shoved against Draco’s collarbone, eyes open. His shirt is soft, and her nose is squished up against it uncomfortably. Her right hand is still gripping his arm painfully tight, and her left is clenched in a fist by her waist. Neither of his hands are touching her. Ginny breathes slowly and heavily into his shirt, trying to keep it even.

They stay like that for a little while.

__~*~__

The letter she sends is short and to the point. It mentions N.E.W.T.s and the upcoming holidays. It ends with ‘I miss you’.

The letter she gets back is fourteen inches long and has to be separated into two envelopes. It’s also accompanied by a care package containing homemade cookies. If Errol had carried it, he would have died. The letter mentions Aquila when it asks if Hogwarts has always had eagle owls.

Ginny shares the cookies with Draco, and they both feed crumbs to his owl while she composes her reply. Draco is writing a letter to his own parents, a little longer than usual to make up for the missed week.

It occurs to Ginny that no one knows about Draco, still. And that she doesn’t know what he writes in those letters.

She wonders if Draco is saying that Aquila was sick, or if he’s going to tell the truth.

She kind of wants to talk to Ron and Hermione.

__~*~__

It’s still too hard. At least for long. But she forces her feet to hold still in the evening, to sit down in a chair near enough to theirs instead of wandering all over the castle, and that’s progress.

June starts sunny and Ginny feels different.

__~*~__

She tells Luna about Draco. Luna nods and warns her that pintied nartogs are especially fierce this season.

She can’t believe she hasn’t talked to this girl for so long.

__~*~__

June 5th is Draco’s birthday. He is nineteen. They are friends.

Ginny sits next to him on one of many hills, stretching her legs out. There is almost more dirt than grass, but it’s not too bad. “What do you want?” she asks.

Draco turns his head and looks at her. He leans a little closer. He looks at her for a long, slow time. Their shoulders are touching – his left and her right. Their eyes are meeting. Their faces are close.

He does not kiss her. Ginny isn’t sure she wants him to. She isn’t sure she doesn’t, either – she just knows that it occurred to her as a possibility, which is new. It occurred to her as something that he might like to do.

She doesn’t know if she wants to or not. But he doesn’t try, so it doesn’t bother her so much.

“Owl me,” he says with a wry smirk. He leans back and looks up at the sky, which is mostly blue.

Ginny frowns at him for a moment. “I will,” she eventually decides. “But you have to owl me first – I’m not sending poor Pig off to be scared by Aquila. And – ”

She ponders everything for a moment, then makes up her mind that it will be okay and bumps her shoulder against his. “You’re going to have to meet up with me, too. And buy me lunch. Since you never got me a birthday present.”

“I don’t know your birthday,” he points out.

Ginny bumps him again. “You missed it.”

__~*~__

When Ginny gets off the train, she hugs her mother first, and then her father. It’s the first thing she does off the train.

But the first thing that she does when she arrives home is to visit her apple tree and check. The scars are still there.

She traces them, and suddenly feels her face melt. She wipes at it, and her fingers come away wet. It’s the first time.

Ginny stays there for a long time, crying, tracing the marks, feeling uncomfortable in the cramped tree after a year away, curling around the trunk and getting bark-marks on her face.

But she gets down after a while. She wipes her eyes and goes back for dinner with the family. And she talks to them.

That night it rains, and when Ginny wakes up in the morning the world smells new.

__~*~__

1998

RIP