NOTE: So, here it is. The continuation of Neville and Ginny's conversation that so many of you asked for. I give you the confrontation between Harry and Ginny, which means that I broke a vow and wrote Harry again, all for you. So, enjoy!

I don't own Ginny, and I certainly don't own Harry, the uncooperative jerkface.

Much thanks to Maggie for the beta. Harry would be far more OOC if not for her help!

A Growing Up

The first night after Voldemort's defeat, Ginny woke with her wand pressed against Hermione's throat. The older girl had tried to come into the room quietly, but she could have been as quiet as the dark itself and Ginny would still have woken immediately, her wand at the throat of the intruder before the threshold had even been fully crossed. She had spent too many nights where such vigilance was necessary to survival; she didn't know how to turn it off. Ignoring the other girl's worried questions, Ginny muttered her apologies to Hermione and slipped out of the room to find some dark, cool length of shadowed Common Room where she could regain control of herself.

The second night after Voldemort's defeat, Ginny woke in a cold sweat, gripped by the last remnants of a terrifying nightmare. She was furious with herself, and with her mind for allowing itself to see shadows and hear sounds that weren't there, but she was angrier still at the fact that nightmare'd had nothing to do with the battle or seeing Harry, Fred, Colin, Dean dead or the thousand other nightmares she'd been through in the past year of her life. It was a nightmare she hadn't had for years, the one where she was eleven years old again, lying on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets while Tom Riddle stood over her, growing stronger and stronger as he watched her life ebb away, crooning in her ear that Harry Potter was never coming to save the likes of her. It was the one where she died on the Chamber floor and Lord Voldemort returned, all because Harry didn't care enough about her to come kill the Basilisk, destroy Riddle, and free her from the monsters. She refused to go back to sleep that night because she refused, after all that had happened, to let her worst nightmare be that Harry never came to rescue her.

The third night after Voldemort's defeat, Ginny didn't sleep at all. She wanted to – she was exhausted, emotionally, physically, mentally – but her mind wouldn't shut off. And the few instances when it did, when she was able to almost slip into a doze, it snapped back on without warning, jerking her back to consciousness with the sick sense of falling, or glimpses of nightmares, or echoes of voices. Mostly echoes of voices. They stayed with her long after she'd given up on sleep, as she sat with her knees pressed against her chest, listening with envious longing to Hermione's gentle breathing, consciously forcing down exhausted sobs that she knew were beneath her. She pressed her forehead to her knees and tried not to think at all, but those damned echoes wouldn't leave her alone.

. . . He doesn't realize that I spend every day of my life surrounded by people who want nothing more than to see me bleeding on the ground, hurting at their hand . . .

. . . Did you really think I was interested in you? A silly, pathetic slip of a girl? . . .

. . . Ginny, listen . . . I can't be involved with you anymore . . .

. . . and that none of them want that because I was once Harry Potter's girlfriend . . .

. . . Maybe I was wrong. Maybe Harry Potter won't come to rescue the likes of you. But then, why would he? . . .

. . . It's for some stupid, noble reason, isn't it? . . .

. . . you need to tell him . . . if you truly love him, as you say you do, he deserves to know the truth . . .

. . . Think how much danger you'll be in if we keep this up . . .

. . . What if I don't care? . . .

With an angry growl, she swung her feet to the floor and began to pace angrily, just to move, because staying still wasn't an option. She left the room so as not to disturb Hermione, and she moved up the corridor and down, up and down, up and down, trying to focus on anything that didn't remind her of Harry and all she'd just been through, trying to focus on nothing at all.

. . . Harry Potter is dead. He was killed as he ran away, trying to save himself while you lay down your lives for him. We bring you his body as proof that your hero is gone . . .

. . . Harry! HARRY! . . .

. . . I don't want anyone else to try and help. It's got to be like this. It's got to be me. . .

. . . I am running out of ways to close that gap . . .

Eventually, she came to rest against a wall, sliding down until she was seated on the ground, head cradled in her hands in a doomed-to-failure effort to stop the stream of voices.

. . . I was ready to die to stop you hurting these people. I meant to, and that's what did it . . .

. . . I can't spend the rest of my life as the thing Harry Potter has to protect. I can't . . .

. . . And then you can come back in. You've got to come back in! . . .

"You need to talk to him."

It took Ginny a moment to realize that the last voice had been real, and not an echo in her head. She looked up to see Neville standing a few paces away. Their eyes locked for a moment, then Neville came and sat on the floor beside her. "Have you slept?" he asked. Ginny shook her head.

"You?"

"Only with help," Neville admitted. "Have you talked to him at all? Harry?" Ginny gave a breath of a laugh.

"Talked to him?" she repeated. "You mean you haven't seen how steadfastly we've been avoiding one another the past few days? No, Neville, I haven't talked to him. I haven't said a damn thing to him. And you know what else? He hasn't said a damn thing to me. Except to tell me to shut myself away, safe and sound, and let him and the rest of the adults take care of the fighting."

"You angry?" Neville asked, a hair too casually, and Ginny looked at him, uncertain where the question was coming from or how to answer it.

"I don't know," she said honestly. "I'm not really anything. I'm just sort of numb. I should be something, though, shouldn't I?" she asked, finally voicing a worry that had been festering for days now, since the moment the triumph of Voldemort's defeat had begun to recede. "After everything that's happened, shouldn't I be something? I mean, Godric, my ex-boyfriend died, one of my best friends died, my brother –" Her voice caught slightly. "I should feel something," she whispered helplessly. "And I don't. I just feel numb. Like they're nothing more than names on a list. Collateral damage. Does that make me a horrible person?"

"No," Neville said immediately, his arm around her shoulders. "It makes you someone who spent too long preparing for a hopeless battle, who had to harden herself or risk being crippled too soon. You will feel again, Ginny. It will sink in, at some point. And you're going to need people around you when it does. Which is why you have to talk to him."

"I don't know how," she said simply. "I don't know what to say."

"Are you angry?" Neville repeated softly. Ginny didn't answer right away. When she thought about the last few days, it seemed almost like they had happened to someone else and that she was merely an observer of someone else's life and pain. And when she tried to force herself to realize that they were her experiences, her life, her pain, there was still some level of disconnect that she couldn't overcome. Was she angry? She didn't know. But she needed to figure it out.

So she forced herself back, back to the moment everything had finally come to a head. She remembered her shock and disbelief upon receiving Neville's urgent call back to Hogwarts, the message that told her that Harry had come back and that the fight was starting. She remembered her determination as she'd told the twins what was going on, a determination born out of the knowledge that she was not going to let her mother keep her from standing up with her friends when it mattered the most. She remembered the distinct shock of betrayal when Harry had told them that he wasn't going to stay, that he hadn't come to help them but merely to get some sort of artifact and disappear once more. She remembered the resentment, outrage, and keen sense of unfairness when her mother had demanded that she return home, away from the fighting, and how everyone, including Harry, had agreed. And she remembered the last words Harry had shouted at her, practically the only words he'd even spoken to her, as she made her escape and ran to help: You've got to come back in!

She remembered all that, and for the first time in days, she felt something, something white hot and burning, and she wasn't even aware that she'd nodded in answer to Neville's question. "Then that's all you need," Neville said. "Just hold onto that, Ginny. The rest'll fall into place."

And so the next morning, when they all came back into the relative cool of the Common Room after a morning's worth of work, Ginny went straight to Harry and Ron and Hermione and stood in front of Harry and said, "We need to talk."

He seemed startled by the abruptness of her demand, and then he seemed slightly nervous, probably because he'd seen that she was deadly serious and wasn't messing around, that something was about to happen and it didn't look good for him, but after a shared glance with Ron and Hermione, he simply said, "Okay," and followed her out of the Common Room steadily, if a bit awkwardly.

She didn't look back at him once as she led him through the decimated halls that the cleanup crews hadn't yet gotten to; she'd been holding onto her anger all night, letting it build and letting it settle, and she knew what she had to do, but if she looked back at him, she was afraid she'd lose her nerve.

She led them to an abandoned classroom almost free of rubble and entered, knowing he would follow. Once he was in, she shut the door swiftly, took a deep breath, and turned to face him. He had his mouth open to speak, but she didn't give him the chance. She lifted her hand and, before she could think twice, slapped him across the face as hard as she could.

He was silent for a long moment, face turned away from her by the force of the blow, and she stood shaking with tension and anger and a million other things as she waited for his response.

"I suppose that was for going off to die," he finally said, softly, with a sense of understanding and pity, and with those words, something in her snapped, something that had been building in her since last night was unleashed.

"No," she spat because how dare he! How dare he turn this back to him, how dare he think that she would slap him for intending to give up his life rather than be with her! Did he really think she was that pathetic? She'd been afraid that he'd say something that would dispel her anger, but this . . . this fueled it more than she would have thought possible. "That wasn't for going off to die. I understood that. I could support that. No, Harry, that was for telling me to stay behind, to shut myself up in a room when literally every person that I cared about was off risking their lives for a cause that you damn well better believe I had every right to fight for!" He stared at her, shocked, and his shock only fueled her rage all the more. "You have no idea what life has been like here," she said flatly. "You have no idea because you disappeared. But I didn't. I was here, and I lived it, and it was hell the likes of which you cannot imagine, and you have no right to tell me that I am too young or that it's not my fight. You have no right. This wasn't just your fight, Harry, this was our fight, all of us, and you have no right to swoop in and decide who does or does not get to stand up beside you. It was not about you."

Then she stepped swiftly to him, and he almost flinched away, no doubt expecting another attack, but instead she reached up and kissed him, hard. Then, just as swiftly, she stepped away. "That was for coming back," she said softly. "For not letting those words be the last things you ever said to me. That was because I love you. Because I do love you, Harry. But I can't do this anymore. I can't spend the rest of my life being the thing you protect. I am not a child and I am not innocent, and I do not need you to protect me. And I do not want you to protect me. I want to stand beside you and be your equal because I am your equal, Harry. I am not a helpless eleven-year-old dying in the Chamber of Secrets anymore; I have seen and been through just as much as you have, and I will not be sent to some back corner where I can be protected. I will stand beside you on the front lines, because I have earned that place, as surely as you have, and I will not step aside or step back so that you can fulfill some role you've decided to assign yourself in my life. When you can look me in the eye and recognize that, come find me." And with one last, long look, she turned her back on him and left the room.

She didn't sleep that night, either.

The next morning dawned bright and hot, and Ginny joined the first work crew heading outside, determined to work herself to exhaustion any way that she could. When the sun was directly overhead and the rest of the crew headed inside for lunch, she kept working, shifting massive stone after massive stone from the ruin of what had once been Ravenclaw Tower. It was back-breaking work, and she was glad of it. She took only the shortest break for food when forced, drank water only when it was all but shoved in her face, and otherwise paid no attention to anyone or anything.

There was no sign of Harry.

She worked late into the afternoon, shifting rubble and loading rock after rock into a waiting cart long after the original crew had switched out for cooler, less strenuous work. Some detached part of her mind knew that she'd been working far longer than was wise, that her body was approaching the threshold of what she could physically stand, but it wasn't until she stumbled off balance trying to lift the largest rock yet over her head and into the cart that she became fully and forcefully aware of just how exhausted she was.

Just before she could go crumbling to the ground, hopefully avoiding being crushed by the rock in the process, someone else reached out and braced the other side of her load, balancing it and her, helping her lift it onto the pile. "Thanks," she breathed gruffly.

"Don't mention it," came a soft voice, and if she'd still had the rock in her hands, she would have dropped it all over again because the person standing beside her was Harry. He met her eyes briefly before she looked away, avoiding his gaze as she awkwardly dusted the grit off her hands as best she could, trying to ignore how shaky and unsteady she was. "Can . . . we talk?" Harry asked hesitantly after a moment. Ginny likewise took a moment, then nodded and followed him out across the grounds.

They were silent as they made their way vaguely in the direction of the lake, and it drove Ginny mad. Say something! she wanted to scream, but she knew it wouldn't do any good. She'd done her speaking, all of it. Like Neville had said months ago, it was his turn now. So she walked beside him, silently, and she waited for him to speak, and gave no sign of her inner frustration.

The words, when they came, were not at all what she had expected.

"Will you tell me about your year?"

She stopped and stared, taken aback. "I'm sorry?" she said.

"Will you tell me about your year?" he repeated softly, meeting her eyes. "What it's been like here. What you've been through. Will you tell me?"

"I – it's been hell," she finally managed to get out, and then, haltingly, awkwardly, more words followed.

It was not easy. The words came in jerky phrases and didn't flow. There were things she didn't know how to say and things she didn't want to remember, and the struggle was underlined by a doubt that he really wanted to know in the first place. But he paid rapt attention, and the more she said, the deeper the crease between his eyebrows became, and she knew he was really listening, and that made the words come easier.

It still wasn't easy – she was not a storyteller, and the story came out of order, jumbled up and tangential – but she was fairly sure she got all the important parts in by the end. She told him about Snape and the Carrows, about Muggle Studies and Defense Against the Dark Arts and how laughable those names would have been if there had been anything to laugh about. "It wasn't Hogwarts," she said. "Not in any recognizable way. I couldn't pass last year's sixth year exams if I tried, but none of us were worried about that. We were just trying to survive each day, so what did it matter if I could brew a proper Everlasting Elixir?"

She told him about the Cruciatus Curse and how common it had become, about the public punishments, and how the older students were forced to torture the younger, and what happened to them if they refused. "It doesn't get less painful as it goes on," she said. "It doesn't hurt any less the twentieth time than it did the first. But I guess you become desensitized to it almost, after a while. When that pain is a constant presence in your life, you don't notice it as much."

She told him about Neville and the DA and what it had become. She told him about how hope had slowly disappeared, and how the original DA members did everything in their power to make sure the younger students had as much of it as possible, whatever the cost. Sometimes it just took a smile or a helping hand, but sometimes it needed more, like distracting a Carrow just before they delivered a Cruciatus Curse to some undeserving twelve-year-old, causing enough of a commotion that the Curse was turned on them instead. "About half the time it worked," she said, "and the first or second year would be forgotten at the prospect of torturing us. They came to hate us so much that it was almost too easy. They were itching for chances to punish us. So we gave them those chances, knowing the hope would be that much stronger each time we picked ourselves up off the floor. And I'll never forget the time one of them did it for me. One of them took a Cruciatus meant for me because I hadn't been paying close enough attention to what was going on around me. Her name was Maddie Hughes, and she was a third-year Hufflepuff. Thirteen years old."

"What happened to her?" Harry asked softly, and Ginny shook her head.

"I don't know," she said. "She was one of the eighteen who didn't come back after Christmas. I have no idea where she is or if she's safe or why she didn't come back. But she was a hero that night. Everyone who lived through this year was a hero. And while the thought of eleven- and twelve-year-olds fighting Death Eaters kills some part of me, I couldn't have turned any of them away, if the choice had been mine. We've done a different kind of learning this year, and there aren't any children left in these halls. Robbie Dunne, a first year, couldn't turn a match to a needle if you gave him money, but he's got an Impedimenta that stopped Neville cold. And he watched Death Eaters torture and kill his parents, and they told him to run just before they died, and he did, and he made it back here to us, all by himself. I don't get to tell him he's not old enough to fight."

Harry was silent for a long time after that, and Ginny didn't know what the silence meant, and she was too tired to try and figure out, so she just asked, "What about you?"

He seemed almost startled by the question, as if he'd forgotten Ginny was there. "Me?" he asked, glancing at her. "My year, you mean?" When she nodded, he let out a heavy sigh, as if he didn't know where to begin. "Tame," he finally said, "in a lot of ways, compared to yours." And then he spun her a story of all that he'd seen and done since Bill's disastrous wedding ten months before. It was a tale of unease and tension and building frustration, of intense bouts of life-threatening action followed by weeks of isolation and forced inactivity. It was not glamorous or poetic, or really any kind of journey that most of the wizarding world would expect from their hero. But it was honest; that much Ginny could tell, and it was just as awkwardly told as hers had been. It was nothing more and nothing less than the truth, and Ginny appreciated that.

She kept silent as he spoke, fighting down waves of exhausted and conflicted emotion when he told her of Ron's desertion, of Snape's true loyalties, of willingly facing death so that the final Horcrux could be destroyed. And when he had finished and trailed off into silence, she knew that they were closer than they had been before, that some of the gap had been bridged, but she still had no idea where they stood.

Their conversation had taken them, slowly but surely, around the edge of the lake as the sky grew steadily darker. Now, the sky going pink around the edges, they were almost back to where they had started, the lights of the castle winking out at them, and Ginny knew if they stayed out much later, someone would come looking for them. But just as she was trying to figure out something she could say to start the conversation that she knew had to happen eventually, Harry stopped walking and reached for her hands.

"Ginny," he said, and she held her breath. "Ginny," he said again, "I don't know that I can ever lose the need to protect you." The words came out in a rush, and it took half a second for them to sink in, but once they had, they hit her like a punch to the stomach. She couldn't breathe, but she had no time to collect herself because Harry went on. "I protect people. It's what I do. I've lost too many; I have to hold on to the ones that are left."

Ginny looked down, because she couldn't look at him anymore, and tried not to let what she was feeling show on her face. After the year she'd had, she thought it would be easy, but it must have been the exhaustion taking its toll because she couldn't keep her forehead from furrowing and she was shaking now from something other than fury or anger, and she couldn't make it stop.

"Ginny, I don't want to lose you," he said then, and it brought her back to the moment. She found her voice.

"But you already are, Harry, don't you see that?" she cried, pulling her hands forcefully out of his grasp. "Because the next time you push me behind you, you're going to turn around to find that I'm not there anymore!"

"No, that's not –" Harry turned away from her, running his hands through his hair almost violently. "I don't know how to do this," she heard him murmur in an agitated whisper. Then, abruptly, he turned back to her and grabbed her hands once more. "You're not my equal, Ginny."

It was too much. She would almost have preferred a physical attack to this. She sank to the ground at those words because she just couldn't stay upright anymore. Her energy was gone; this conversation had stolen what little the day's work and four nights' lack of sleep had left her. Elbows on her knees, she buried her hands in her hair and fought back some kind of overwhelming rush of emotion because she didn't know whether or not it would come out as a laugh or a sob. "Oh, Merlin," she heard Harry all but growl, and then, to her surprise, he sank to the ground beside her. "This conversation has not gone the way I wanted it to," he said with another heavy sigh.

And then she did laugh, because she couldn't help it, and she knew she probably sounded hysterical, but she didn't care. "And tell me, Harry," she said with a release of breath that could have been either a laugh or a sob, "how was this conversation going to go? After I tell you that if you can't see me as an equal, I'm gone, and then you come and tell me just that?"

"No!" Harry denied heatedly, sounding as frustrated as Ginny felt. "I didn't mean — that's not what I was trying to say, Ginny!"

She just looked at him, waiting for more, but it didn't come. He just sat, staring at his hands. When it became clear he wasn't going to speak again, she laughed once, bitterly, and looked away. "Then maybe," she said in a hard voice, "you should stop trying to say things, Harry, and just say them."

She could feel him looking at her then, but she kept staring resolutely forward, and a part of her wondered if this was how they were going to be from now on: two people refusing to look at one another, waiting for the other to speak and find a way to fix things that maybe could never be fixed. Something in her cracked at that thought, but she forced herself to stay in one piece.

"I spent three months with a Horcrux around my neck, Ginny," he said finally, and she didn't know what that had to do with anything, but she kept quiet and let him talk. "I knew exactly what it was and exactly what it would do to me. I had two other people with me to share the knowledge and the burden, and it still almost destroyed us. You lived with one for almost a year, not knowing what it was or what it would do to you. For almost a year, you fought it. And you nearly won. At eleven." There was a long silence, and Ginny held her breath. "You are not my equal, Ginny," he said softly. "If I'm lucky . . . someday I might be yours. That's what I was trying to say."

That's what they remember, you know.That Harry Potter came and saved me. That I was rescued. Not that I fought that bastard's pull for a year. Not that I was down in that Chamber for hours before anyone showed up to save me. Not that I fought him off longer than any eleven-year-old should have been able to. No, they remember the damsel in distress, and so does Harry . . .

Ginny's head spun with the echo in Harry's words of what she'd told Neville so many months ago. She'd been waiting so long to hear those words from anyone, and to hear them now from Harry was nearly overwhelming. She didn't know how to respond, so she didn't say anything. After a long moment of silence, Harry spoke again.

"I need you, Ginny," he said. "And I don't want to lose you. I don't mean in the future, when danger comes again. I mean now. Right now, I don't want to lose you. I'm willing to do whatever it takes, Gin. So, no. I'm never going to lose the need to protect you. But I can learn not to act on it."

She didn't realize she was crying until the first tears hit her arm. Immediately, she turned away from Harry, horrified at her lack of control. "Gin," she heard him say, but with a frantic wave of one hand, she did her best to silence him, and then just turning away wasn't enough anymore. She stood and walked away, just a few paces, angrily swiping at her cheeks, trying to erase all trace of tears. That she should lose control like this at all was bad enough; that it should happen in front of Harry was ten times worse.

"Ginny."

His voice was in her ear and his hand was on her shoulder, and she stiffened instinctively, clutching for her wand but remembering at the last moment not to draw it and attack. The weight of his hand fell from her shoulder, and she felt him step back.

"I understand why you feel you have to be strong all the time," he said softly then. "You've had to be. You've been through hell and back. But now . . . you don't have to be strong all the time, Ginny. Not anymore. It's okay to break down, every once in a while, and let someone else be strong for you. And I – well, I wish you would."

It undid her. If he'd demanded it of her, she could have turned her back on him, denied him and walked away. But he hadn't. He'd made it a request, given her the choice, and it was that choice, that option, that undid her. She'd asked him to change, and he had. Now he was asking the same of her.

Love can't be like a stone, Ginny, she heard, and with the memory of those words, something in her was released, and she broke down in a way that she hadn't broken down in front of someone since she was twelve years old. She broke down, and she reached out instinctively for Harry, and he was there. With Harry's arms strong and sure around her, she let go, and for the first time in four days, she grieved. She cried for Fred and Colin and Dean and everyone else who had died, for Maddie Hughes and Robbie Dunne and all the other children who would never be children again, and for herself and Harry and Ron and Hermione and Seamus and Lavender and Neville and everyone who was broken but mending, nearly shattered but finding a way to go on.

How long she stood and cried, she didn't know. But eventually she took a deep, shuddering breath, and regained control. With a wordless look to Harry, she let herself be led back toward the castle just as the sun finally disappeared behind the treetops.

The fifth night after Voldemort's defeat, Ginny fell asleep unintentionally, in front of the fire in the Gryffindor Common Room, wrapped in Harry's arms. She fell asleep without trying, and she did not toss and turn, and she did not wake when others walked through the Common Room, and she did not dream. And when she woke the next morning, she found herself in a deserted Common Room, tucked in under a blanket, with a scrap of parchment in her hand. It read:

Ginny,

Don't kill me for not waking you. You needed sleep more than you needed to be working on a crew, and I'm not the only one who thinks so. Get something to eat and then come find us. There will still be plenty of work to do.

Harry

She found herself smiling. Carefully, she folded the note and stood. She moved toward the tower window, and stood in the sunlight. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the warmth, breathing in deeply, allowing herself the kind of moment she hadn't had in over a year. Then she turned and, with a smile still on her face, she left. There was work to be done, and she would do it. It was time to move on, to celebrate life, and to truly live in the world she was helping to rebuild with the people who mattered most.

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war. Love is a growing up.

~ James A. Baldwin

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