Who Can Live Without It, I Ask In All Honesty?

Harry slammed the front door of Grimmauld Place shut and trudged into the kitchen, his shopping bag gripped in his hand. He placed the shopping rather roughly on the kitchen island and placed his head into his hands; he'd known from the beginning that dating someone that he'd gone to school with could've been complicated, potentially, but he'd never believed that the person would've used him the way she had. When he'd caught Ginny snogging Viktor Krum in the Gryffindor common room during the late-November get-together at Hogwarts, just last evening, he'd never believed that such a thing as not being with his childhood sweetheart forever would come to pass, and the ensuing argument hadn't helped matters either.

"You've been so distant for months, Harry!" Ginny had cried out when he'd stormed away from her snogging session with the pro-Bulgarian Quidditch Seeker. She crossed her arms, her ample cleavage doing nothing for him as it crept upwards, towards the oval neckline of her beautiful brown blouse. "Remember my birthday?"

Harry, who had stormed out of the common room and up the spiral staircase of the astronomy tower, was focusing mainly on his breathing, the hot breath itself turning into puffy-like clouds which remained suspended in the air before flying skyward and dying off. He remembered her birthday all too well; her seventeenth birthday had been celebrated at the Burrow, just weeks after the Battle of Hogwarts, and everyone seemed content, despite the fact that Fred was no longer with them. "Yeah, I remember," Harry replied at last, his tone bitter.

"Well," Ginny went on, tossing her great mane of red hair, "if you recall correctly, you not only neglected to bring my birthday present, but you didn't even partake in the festivities. If you were feeling so down, perhaps you shouldn't have shown up at all."

Harry gripped the stone pillar of the astronomy tower; it was a beautiful late-autumn night upon the grounds of Hogwarts, despite the fact that thick clouds threatened to block out the stars. "You know full well that Ron and Hermione would never have allowed that," he said softly.

"Be that as it may," Ginny continued, "you haven't even made an effort to discuss our future since the war ended. I mean, you took your NEWT's with Ron and Hermione during the summer, and you and Ron joined the Auror Academy just as September came knocking. Your academic and professional futures have been settled. What about your romantic ones?" She stepped forward then, and placed a gentle hand on his arm. "Could it be possible, Harry, that you and I aren't what the other needs, and that we haven't been, not for a long time?"

Harry felt a lump rising in his throat then, and peered over at Ginny, green meeting brown as she looked sympathetically at him. "Gin..."

"I said your past didn't matter to me, none of it did," Ginny told him quickly. "You just never seemed to want me to—"

"That's enough, Ginny," Harry said, cutting across her; he really didn't want to talk about this, not right now.

"Harry," she said, "you know, it wouldn't matter to me if you weren't...you know, into me, like that," she assured him. "The main thing here is to be honest with yourself. Think about what you want, and just take it."

Harry nibbled at his bottom lip. "Yeah..."

"It's not me, then, is it?" she wanted to know. "It's not me that you want. I think if we were what the other wanted, then I wouldn't want Viktor, and you wouldn't be so reluctant to discuss any potential future between us."

Harry shook his head. "No, it's not, Gin. I'm sorry."

Ginny nodded. "I'm sorry, too," she told him, before pressing a kiss onto his cheek and leaving the scene, leaving Harry to grip onto the stone ledge and stare out at the school grounds, feeling more alone than ever.