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The tea smell suffuses her as Ginny leans in to stroke her mum’s hand—earth and malt and cream. Her nose scrunches against it as she pulls back from the cup’s warmth. Ginny fights the memories of chipped mugs at the Burrow as she blinks the Great Hall back into being. “I’ll be back before your second cup. Promise.” A weak nod in response; she figures it’s enough.
The castle’s been left open. Light through shattered windows, light through gaping doors.
Ginny runs.
The courtyard, again. Spots of blood where she’d found the girl. Everything was still broken. Too quiet and too loud.
None of them had planned for this—the first day of peace. In her mind, Ginny ticks all the boxes just like her mother does, bending her fingers as she counts the family off. Then Neville. Luna. Seamus. (Harry.) Everyone, she knows, is with everyone else.
What does it mean that I’m here on my own?
Freedom, of a sort, she decides, looking round the rubble to find no one looking back at her. She’d understood it well, last night, Harry’s wide eyes in the Room of Requirement, an army assembled for which he hadn’t asked. They’d all called her “Chief,” all year long, and it unnerved her. A doubling spell of sorts, in that—the strong leader they expected and the scared girl they couldn’t see. Ginny bumps her back against a dusty pillar and wonders if both parts of her can sit now, in the grass.
The sun’s warm on her face and she can’t quite tell how long she leans there. She hears the chunk of granite before she sees the foot that kicked it forward, and panic floods her quickly as she pulls out and points her wand.
“I could have shown him the common room, you know.”
Cho Chang stands in front of her, every hair in place. Her expression is inscrutable; her unwrinkled bright clothes are impossibly clean. In an instant, when their gazes meet, Ginny silently asks what Cho’s second self’s afraid of.
“It was stupid,” Ginny mutters. “I don’t know what I thought.”
“You probably thought that I’d come back for him.” Cho answers her quietly, shaking her head as Ginny moves to rise, gracefully lowering herself to sit across from her.
Ginny shrugs, noncommittal. She opens her mouth and Cho cuts her off.
“I came back for Cedric. I came back for me.” The second sentence rises, spoken louder than the first one.
Cho pauses, eyes traveling over the courtyard. Ginny takes her own look. Pockmarked bushes, piles of stone. “When all of this settles, people will talk. For all we both know, they’re all talking, in there, now.” Cho’s elegant hand gestures lightly towards the castle.
“So I’ve come out here to ask you, Weasley…why did you come back? There’s more to your story than the part you play in his.”
Ginny startles again like she did when Cho first spoke.
“I didn’t leave for long. I don’t know what you know but…it’s been a weird year.” Cho quirks an eyebrow; when Ginny scoffs, Cho laughs too. The next silence is comfortable for a bit, and then it’s not.
Cho’s looking straight at her because she still expects an answer. Demanding it, even, like she knows it won’t get easier. Ginny shuts her eyes. Then opens them. Then lifts her chin and sighs.
“Because…because I had to. All of it. I chose to. Not just because of him.” A year goes by in seconds and the mere images exhaust her; she doesn't have the energy to tell Cho more than that. On a bone-deep level, Ginny means what she is saying. Impossible for her to have done anything less. Fully separate from Harry, but a part of her like him.
When Cho nods, then laughs again, it’s as if she read her mind. “Fucking Gryffindors,” she answers, her voice sweet like a bird’s. Ginny smiles and leans forward, picking up the granite chunk and tossing it away.
“Which House asks the questions when you already know the answer?” She stands, and Cho stands with her.
Together, they walk back.