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“Why do you still have this?” Harry asked incredulously, holding up a dusty, tattered book titled Year with the Yeti. A smarmy-looking blond wizard showing a dazzlingly white set of teeth winked at her from the cover.
Her stomach dropped.
“Give me that!” She snatched it from him and sat on her bed, feeling herself blush.
Harry stared at her, a funny mixture of disgust and fondness on his face. “Please don’t tell me you fancied him too.”
“Of course I didn’t!”
He sat down next to her, trying not to laugh. “I’ll have you know that this is what we call hard evidence in Auror training –”
“Guess again, Auror Potter.”
She opened the cover. On the first, blank page, in the bottom-right corner, in round, girly, 11-year-old handwriting, it said:
This book belongs to Ginny Weasley
(given to her by Harry Potter)
The words Harry Potter were enveloped in a large pink crayon heart.
Still flushed, Ginny glowered at him, but Harry had that soppy expression of his that she was pretty sure only she was privy to, and wasn’t looking at her. He gently stroked the heart surrounding his name with the tips of his fingers. As if on cue, her face softened into a smile.
“We sold the rest of them to a second-hand bookshop after the school year was over, not that they’d been worth much by then,” she said dryly. “But I had to keep one.”
“Why?” Harry murmured, still gazing at the letters.
“Because you’d given them to me you ninny, which meant a stupid amount. And also…” She took a deep breath. “I guess I just wanted something to remind me that not all of my year was Tom.” A pause, and then: “Some of it was my big fat embarrassing crush.”
Harry chuckled.
“Well, look at you now. You’ve got your big fat embarrassing crush sitting on your bed.”
“Swoon!” Ginny said theatrically, bringing the back of her hand to her forehead. They both laughed, but Harry’s face turned serious again.
“I wish I’d been there for you,” he said wistfully. “After. I… I could have said something, and I just sort of… forgot.”
Ginny stared at him, feeling her heart melt.
“Don’t be silly. You had your aunt and uncle to worry about. And then we all thought Sirius was after you, remember?”
“I know, but I could have at least… I dunno, written you a letter or something.”
Ginny snorted. “You are aware that if you had written me a letter that summer, I never would have got over you?”
He gave her a slightly stung look.
“Which I really had to, so I could fall in love with you properly.”
That earned her a smile. She gazed into his eyes, trying to convey all the love she felt for him, all her hope that he would someday stop blaming himself for everything that had ever hurt his loved ones.
“You’re here now. That’s all that matters.”
He brought a hand to her cheek in a caress, his eyes impossibly soft. Ginny closed the Year with the Yeti and allowed herself to be drawn into a kiss. The last thing on her mind before all thought disappeared was how much she wished she could tell her 11-year-old self that it does, indeed, get better.