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it shouldn’t surprise ginny. what she knows is coming. she’s known they walk a fragile line. she’s known it all this time. but logic doesn’t stop the headaches she gets when she thinks about it for too long; when she looks at this thing she and harry have been painfully careful not to call a relationship too deeply. logic doesn’t stop her blood from freezing when she catches that faraway look he gets in his eyes sometimes, like this was all a big mistake he should’ve known better than to make.
she wants to be mad at him. she wants to rage at him; scream, cry, throw a fit for treating them as something so disposable; for being so careless with her. but she can’t. because that’s not what he’s doing is it? it’s getting dark and it’s all too quiet and he’s just trying to stay afloat like the rest of them. now more than ever, everyone seems to look at harry like he’s some miracle bestowed on them, some chosen thing, who can just snap his fingers and set the world to right. but ginny knows better. knows he’s as lost as the rest of them - even if he won’t tell her what exactly it is he’s lost about. knows that this thing that he’s going to do with them - the destruction he’s going to sow - sooner or later, is the only answer he can see - even if it’s so wrong, it’s laughable.
ginny debates begging him, whispering don’t leave me like this to him in between kisses, when her fingers are in his ridiculously messy hair and he’s breathing unsteadily, pupils blown wide open, looking at her like he’s getting drunk on her. like he’d do anything for her. but she cannot find it in her to taint those blissful moments. she debates wounding him, screaming i thought i had you figured out at him because she knows just how hard it’ll drive a knife into his heart. but she knows that heart - that wonderful, bleeding thing - and ginny cannot hurt it for the life of her. it’s not his fault that something’s gone terribly wrong; it’s not his fault she can’t turn back now; it’s not harry’s fault she’s haunted. harry’s not some great chosen one; he’s just a boy who’s trying his best to carry all the things the world has forced onto his shoulders, and ginny’ll give him that grace even if it kills her.
it finally comes the day they bury dumbledore. she does not rage. she does not scream or cry or throw a fit. ginny simply stands there and watches harry walk away from everything they had. and she hates herself just a little because she knows she still means every word she said to him. every sweet-nothing she whispered in his ear when he had her up against the greenhouse wall, lips on her neck. every half-baked wish she told him about when they were the last ones in the common room, sat on the ground, leaning on each other with the fire dying out in front of them. every gentle affirmation she gave him, hand over his heart, on his chest, down his arms, in his hair. every little thing she said to replace i love you. she doesn’t entirely know how long she stays glued to that spot, eyes still trained in the direction she watched him go, but it’s long enough for dean of all people to find her. he must see something in her, dean, because he tells her a joke, tries to take away her pain, and ginny thinks - for the briefest moment - that dean is far more than she ever gave him credit for. it’s replaced just as quickly as it forms, however, with the undeniable fact that - as far as ginny’s concerned - he’ll never hold a candle to harry. harry who, for all his faults, was the only person she ever actually wanted to hold on to, even if she was holding on to nothing now.
ginny knows, as everyone boards the train when term is well and truly over, that she’ll feel worse than this in the coming months. she sees it in him - in the way he ducks into the compartment they both thought they’d be sat in together this time around, in the way he glues himself to the corner of it, avoiding the watchful gazes surrounding him, emerald eyes instead focused on the parts of hogwarts visible through his window. harry’s never been one to sit still, and the only thing that was really keeping him at school this past year was dumbledore. and them, some small corner of herself screams. but dumbledore’s dead now, and they won’t finish what they started. not with the war this close; not with hogwarts they’d always known slipping away from them in real time. ginny knows that whatever it was that kept dragging him into dumbledore’s office all term will drag him away much farther now - farther from her than she even wants to imagine - and merlin only knows if he’ll be able to make it out; make it back to her. but she’s always know this, hasn’t she? they’d always walked a fragile line. she’d known it all this time. she just never ever thought she’d see it break.