Chapter Text
It’s raining the way it only ever seems to in Islington, London—half-hearted, insistent, a background hum that makes your thoughts seem ten clicks slower. Harry sits in the upstairs bedroom of Grimmauld Place watching water gather and draw invisible constellations on the glass. He hasn’t so much as trimmed his hair in months.
There’s a letter from Kingsley Shacklebolt, unopened. One from Molly, too, in her careful, brick-red script. There are half a dozen from Ginny, their corners soft from rereading, or maybe from just being handled, the words pressed in so hard they almost cut through the parchment. Harry’s stopped opening them, but not because he doesn’t care. For a while he thinks maybe that’s worse.
Hermione and Ron come ‘round when he lets them—she brings stacks of books she thinks might help, and Ron just sits in silence, which sometimes helps more. But the house always feels emptier after they leave, like they might’ve pulled what little warmth there was right out the front door with them.
~
Ginny writes more than anyone, but when she tries to see him, he finds reasons not to. It's not that he doesn't want her; it's that he doesn't want himself—in this half-life, after all the fighting, now that the end doesn’t feel like victory at all. When he dreams, it’s about Fred laughing with a mouthful of jam or Tonks and Lupin sharing some of their last moments with their baby Teddy, and Harry wakes up breathless with shame for all the things he can't fix.
Somewhere between Christmas and the snow turning to slush, Ginny stops writing. Harry reads the last letter again and again—a few lines about flying, about how Hogwarts helps and hurts all at once, and about missing Fred in little ways and big ones.
The point is, he drifts. Not forward, just sideways. He doesn’t notice much as the days get softer around the edges, till one Saturday Hermione says, “You don’t have to stay stuck, Harry. That’s not how your story goes.”
~
He’s sitting at the window daydreaming about his quidditch days when Ginny asks to meet—it felt like one of those moments Hermione would call a turning point. Slowly he has been getting out of his funk and wants Ginny back in his life, right beside his side.
So Harry puts on the best suit he owns—one that’s new, which was intentionally picked in dark blue so it doesn’t resemble his attire at the Yule Ball. He feels silly but determined, cheeks pink as he knocks on the door of the Burrow. Mrs. Weasley’s hug is warm but distracted; Harry can tell she’s trying to keep busy to avoid something or someone.
He finds Ginny in the garden, ankles deep in wildflowers and something sad in her eyes. She’s different, somehow: softer, but less breakable.
“I’m glad you came by,” Ginny starts. Her voice is low, sure. “But I need to tell you something before we... before we say anything.”
She explains, awkward but steady, how she’s seen Dean lately and how it makes sense in a way she can’t quite describe. “He listens,” she says, “and I feel seen and safe with him.” There are tears in her eyes that don’t fall. “I’m sorry, Harry. I’ll always care for you. But I know myself. And I know you aren’t—” She leaves the sentence unfinished. She doesn’t have to.
He stands there feeling like he’s been dropped from a great height. But even as it hurts, he can see the relief blooming in Ginny’s freckled face, the rightness of her happiness. Sometimes, it seems, love means learning when to let go, and when you can’t, learning how to hold on differently.
He hugs her briefly—her hair smells like the Burrow, like sun and scones and home. And in that moment he wonders if the Burrow will ever feel like home again. Then he leaves, suit collar wilted and shoes sinking into the muddy ground.
~
He doesn’t think about where he’s walking, just that he’s walking anywhere at all. The sun’s gone down, but lamps flicker in the windows of Hogsmeade—tinsel hangs limp in the doorways, leftover from a Christmas that passed without much notice.
The Three Broomsticks looks as it always does: busy, loud, and hopeful in a worn and battered kind of way. Harry stands awkwardly in the door, blinking against the firelight.
“Harry?” It’s Luna, unmistakable as ever, sitting alone at a cluttered corner table, her hair twisted up with stray bits of holly and what looks like a tiny ceramic mouse.
He nearly turns away—does she want company? But she smiles, wide and clear, so he joins her. He doesn’t have the right words, so he takes hers. “Luna?”
“Rough day?” she asks, no judgment.
“You could say that.” He laughs, surprised.
They order butterbeer and talk about things that aren’t painful: about acromantulas and thestrals, about things Luna’s read in The Quibbler. There’s a comfort in it, the steady thread of her attention, her gentle detachment from all the usual drama. Luna, who never asked him to be the Chosen One, just lets him be Harry. He finds himself saying things he hasn’t said out loud in months, and she listens as though each word is a rare spell. She tells him how finishing Hogwarts is lonelier than she pictured, but also that she sees new kinds of magic everywhere.
And for the first time—after a year spent hiding away from the world—he feels not lighter, but right. Like he can bear the weight he carries.
“Well,” Luna says as she drains her glass, a little bit more than tipsy after all the butterbeers, “the world’s still bigger than either of us, Harry. There are dragons in Romania and nundus in Africa. If you want, you could come see them with me. It might do us both good, and I hear the moondew flowers in Uganda bloom for only a fortnight.”
He laughs, though he’s not sure if she’s joking or not. But something inside him loosens. “Alright, Luna,” he says, meeting her gaze. “Let’s go see what no one else sees.”
Maybe it’s gratitude. Maybe it’s the butterbeer. Maybe it’s something better. For the first time in months, Harry doesn’t feel quite so haunted by what’s behind him—and instead, he wonders about what might be ahead.