Chapter Text
She kissed me.
And I let her.
Not because I didn’t want to — I did, or at least I thought I did — but because everything around us was still smoking and crumbling, and I didn’t know what else to do.
Ginny was familiar. She was hope and flame, and she'd burned so brightly in my memory when we were on the run. Merlin, I used to fall asleep thinking about her, half-hoping that if I lived through it all, I’d get to be with her again.
But here’s the thing they don’t tell you: you come back different.
You live through death, and war, and watching people break in front of you, and you don’t come back the same boy who left.
When she kissed me, it felt like reaching back into something that had already ended. Like trying to find warmth in a fire that had long since gone out.
I didn’t say anything, of course. I held her. I kissed her back. Everyone around us was crying or reuniting or looking for the dead, and I was standing there pretending that this — us — still made sense.
But when I opened my eyes, I wasn’t looking at Ginny.
I was looking past her.
At Hermione.
She was talking to Kingsley, I think. Her brow was furrowed, wand tucked behind her ear, sleeves rolled up like she was preparing to clean the entire Great Hall by hand if she had to.
Her hair was in chaos, more than usual, dust and ash in the curls. There was blood on her sleeve, not hers. Her hands were shaking slightly, but she stood tall, chin up.
And something in me pulled.
Not a romantic swell. Not sudden clarity. Nothing so neat.
Just a pull.
Like gravity.
When did that start? I don’t even know.
Was it Godric’s Hollow, when she led me away from my parents’ graves? Or when she cast the birds at Ron and then cried after, quietly, behind a silencing charm she thought I didn’t notice? Or Malfoy Manor — when she screamed and screamed and I couldn’t reach her and I thought I might go mad from it?
Or was it just every day, every quiet moment — the books she handed me without asking, the way she knew what I was thinking before I did, the way her voice was the only one that ever cut through the noise in my head?
I used to think Hermione belonged to Ron. That there was some unspoken rule written in stone during fourth year — she was his, and I would never cross that line.
But she isn’t a thing to be owned.
And lately, when she looks at me, I see something I didn’t before.
Something aching.
Ginny laced her fingers through mine, and I felt it again — that pull away. Not violently. Just a quiet dissonance.
I told myself it was because I was tired. We’d just buried too many people. I hadn’t slept properly in a year. I hadn’t even eaten yet.
But the truth was… Ginny made me feel like who I used to be. Quidditch and kisses behind the broom shed. She loved the boy who made her laugh and came back from the dead.
Hermione…
She saw everything.
The boy. The broken bits. The frightened, furious parts. She saw them all and didn’t look away.
And somewhere deep inside me — in the place I’d buried under obligation and guilt and war — I knew.
Things weren’t the same anymore.
Not with Ginny.
Not with me.
Not with Hermione.
I caught Hermione’s eye across the room.
She didn’t smile.
She just looked at me — really looked — and then looked away.
And I felt something shift.
Something I didn’t have words for yet.
But I would.
Soon.