Harry held Ginny's note for awhile. It was a can of worms he really wasn't prepared for. He didn't know what to say to her. He had sort of hoped after all this time that she had moved on. Forgotten about him. She wasn't some fling in his turbulent love life, he knew that. He couldn't ever bring himself to vilify her in any way, but she wasn't the one for him. It had taken many long months of very hard work to figure out that she was great, amazing and even brilliant, but she wasn't what he wanted.
She had an easy kind of confidence. Like the world was built up around her and she was in total control of it. He envied that, even though he knew it was a façade. Just a face prepared to throw people off the trail of the shy sweet girl she really was. However over time it seemed that she had forgotten that it was a false persona as well. She was beautiful, there was no denying that. Anyone could see it. He would be a fool not to. But she wasn't his kind of beautiful. Her looks belong in another man's fantasies.
She was charming, and funny, but she was never as in on the joke when it was about her. She was so strong, and yet so fragile. Her strength was outward. It was there for the world to see. Her heart was dangling precariously over the desire to be accepted for who she was and the hope that no one ever found out. Harry needed inner strength. He needed someone that never cared what the world thought of her. He just hadn't found that girl yet, though he was certain that his heart knew more than it let on.
His relationship with Ginny had been mired in a kind of storm for as long as it existed. In the beginning he though that it had felt right, only to discover that what it really felt like was forced. He felt like he was preordained by friends and circumstance to wind up with Ginny. After the war it only got worse. He began to ignore her owls, he would treat her with nothing but respect, friendship but nothing more. He could see that it hurt her. He felt horrible about it, but he could never ask her out again. Not after what happened.
It is said that battle changes men. This was truer for Harry than most. He had gone in as a boy hero. The underdog favorite of the masses. He had come out a kind of demigod to his people. He was regarded as the most powerful wizard of his age. Very little of that was true. He was more cunning than clever, and he was more brave than powerful. Mostly though he just felt like he was lucky. The luckiest wizard of his age. There were so many books out about his life. Journalists and historians and whoever else. For months after the war he could not walk through Diagon Alley without hundreds of copies of his own bewildered face staring back at him from book covers.
In those books were lies. His relationship with Ginny had been romanticized beyond absurdity. They had called her the greatest love of his life. Wizarding magazines said she was gorgeous. The only witch around suitable for such a hero as him. Even then he felt the pressure. The Minister of Magic had even gone so far as to ask him to date her again. It was good for the post war for him to date a girl from a pure bloodline.
It all just made Harry feel sick. Just looking at her note was making him recall some of the reasons that he left. He didn't know if he had the courage to face her again. Not now, certainly not like this. He had to though. He knew that much. If only to put it all to rest at last. He just had to find a way to do it without hurting her.
* * *
First thing the next morning Harry got dressed proper and made his way to the Ministry. He checked in as a guest and walked the long hallway the office of Hermione Granger. She had always been the best person to ask about "girl things" in his life. Just being there he recalled how much he had once wished to be an Auror. Chasing down the bad guys and doing what was right for the world. The fight had gone out of him in the intervening years. He still admired them, but he was done with danger, and he was done with fame. He actually feared excelling at that job, if only for the potential of ever growing fame. He spent most days before his travels hoping the excitement about him would die down.
While lost in his reminiscence he found himself in front of the very office he wanted. She had been doing so much with her life. While Harry had worried about her isolation as described in Ron's letters he could never argue with her passion. The equal rights legislation she had helped pass had bridged so many gaps in their culture. Open negotiations with the giants had been fostered through her. She had fought for wages for house elves and won. She had even established a foreign student exchange program with the best wizard school in the world. He was nothing if not proud of her.
He knocked his slow beat on her door and she opened it. She looked harried. Her hair was a mess and she had a pencil balanced delicately between her lips. He noticed suddenly what amazing lips she had. Plump and soft and pink. She wore no makeup, she looked a sight, but he thought she was stunning. He dismissed the thought. He was sure he had noticed all of this before. He had likely just forgotten it in his travels. When she saw him though, something even more wonderful happened. She lit up. Her face brightened and her whole body seemed to float.
Harry found himself just staring at her. Perhaps for too long because she started to smooth out her hair nervously. She thought he was noticing how badly she looked. Finally she smiled and the pencil slipped away to the ground.
"Hello, Harry. What can I do for you?"
"Uhm.." Harry bent down and retrieved her pencil, "Here you go. Can I come in?"
"Thank you." She smiled reassuringly, "And of course you can."
Aside from a very large stack of paperwork on her desk Hermione's office looked pretty much like he figured it would. It was neat and organized. It had a couch against the far wall with filing cabinets surrounding it. There was a full waste paper basket against a large oak desk with one of those ergonomic chairs behind it. Against the other wall she had one of those pin boards with news print clipping hung on it. In the corner by the door was a stool. Harry grabbed the stool and sat in front of her desk. She moved and sat down beside it.
"It has been crazy here." She answered no question, "If you hadn't stopped by I might have forgotten to take a break."
"Good thing I stopped by then." He grinned, "What're you working on?"
"This and that." She answered running her hand over the paper work, "Trying to do something with the storehouse of dark arts artifacts left over from the war, mostly."
"All this and she teaches." He said good humouredly.
"Yes she does." Hermione smiled at him, "So what brings you down?"
"Well, basically. This." He handed her the note from Ginny. Her eyes glided over it once, then again. She mouthed a few words here and there before putting it on her desk and staring at him.
"Are you two going to get back together?" There was a weird concern in her voice that Harry couldn't place.
"Uhm, well that's sort of the thing, though isn't it." He answered guiltily.
"Is it?" She demanded, "When did she even write this?"
"Last night probably. I talked with Ron about how I didn't have a plus one and next thing I know there's that thing." Harry looked at it with a sick grimace.
"Ron?" Hermione rubbed her forehead, "Ever the match maker that one."
"Except I don't think I want to be a part of that match." Harry confessed.
"Excuse me?" Hermione looked shocked. She was. The whole world thought that the love affair between Harry and Ginny was the stuff of legend, "You don't?"
"No." Harry looked away, "I don't. And please don't make a big deal out of it."
"It's just that, the stuff in those books.." She trailed off.
"You believe everything you read?" He shot back. He was met only with a stare from her, "Oh, well. Yeah I guess you do."
"It's just that, well Harry." She paused to collect her thoughts, "You never went for anyone else after her."
"Goddamn those books." He said darkly, "It's not like that, it never was. I dated her for less than a year in school. Where do these people get these things. Need I remind that Rita Skeeter once said we were a couple. People make these things up to sell books."
"Yeah." Hermione said with a sad look on her face, "I guess that's true. But you could have righted it all if you took up that publisher's offer and written your own book." She changed the subject.
"Hermione, Me write?" Harry grinned, "Clearly you never read my essays in school."
"Now that, we both know is a lie." She laughed.
"True." He conceded, "But nonetheless, I don't really think I'll be penning that manuscript in this lifetime."
"Shame." She answered dismissively, "A lot of people would be interested in your take on events."
"Dear world, I was one lucky kid." Harry said confidently with laughter chasing his voice.
"Oh, Harry." Hermione reached across the desk and took his hand in hers, "You have to know it was so much more than that. You are the hero they think you are, Harry. Whether you see it or not."
"Look, I'm not trying to change the subject here," He said before he did just that, "But I came down here for advice. I don't want to hurt Ginny. Last thing I want to do."
"Then ask her out." Hermione said coldly.
"Okay, I lied." Harry responded too quickly, "That's the last thing I want to do."
"You're sunk then." She said with a weird sort of victorious smile.
"That's not the best news ever." Harry leaned back in his chair and sighed, "It's not that I don't love her. I do. She meant a lot to me once upon a time. She did, regardless of what I say. It's just… Merlin! I can never find the words!"
"Calm down." She said caressing his hand. It occurred to her then that she had been holding his hand for a long time. Had neither of them noticed that? How odd she thought briefly, "Just let it roll around in your head and then say it."
"You always know what to do." He squeezed her hand and a spark passed between them, though neither would admit to the other, "Okay. I don't think she's the one I really want."
"Who do you want?" A ring of hope was in her tones, though Harry failed to notice it.
"I don't know." He confessed, "I honestly don't. I just know it's not her. I can't talk to other people about this. I need you."
"That I can understand. Ron is her brother." Hermione quickly summed up.
"It's not that." Harry smiled, "No one knows me like you. No one let's me think aloud from head and heart like you."
"Well." Hermione blushed, "That's extraordinarily kind of you to say."
"Not really." Harry said flippantly. He had become so much more easy going in his time away, so much more of his heart was on his sleeves these days. It was an adjustment she was going to have to get used to, "Just a statement of fact."
"I don't really know what to tell you though." Hermione said sadly, "The very best you can do is let her down gently. But either way it's going to hurt her. You broke her heart once by leaving. Maybe she just needs this closure."
"You might be right." Harry sighed, "Fighting wars was so much easier. Point wand, Fire. Nothing to it, except looming death and horrible dreams. Why is dealing with relationships so much harder?"
"It's the nature of the beast, Sweetheart." Hermione smiled, "We're better at war than love. It takes a truly amazing person to understand love the way you do, to use it the way you do. But unfortunately, this time around, it's still the pits to dump someone."
"You're right. You're always right." Harry nodded, "You doing anything tomorrow night?"
"What?" Hermione asked shocked.
"I was wondering if you wanted to hang out." He said innocently, "It's been forever, and as great as talking to you is, I was hoping to just get coffee and walk around the city. Like old times."
"Sure." She said, "What brought this on?"
"You know it's the damnedest thing." He said as he got to his feet to leave, "You've been on my mind for awhile now. See you."
"Yeah." She smiled, "See you."
With that Harry was gone. She sat back in her chair and kept rerunning the words over in her head. He had been thinking about her for awhile. What could that mean? She hoped they were good thoughts. She hoped so much. Never in her life had one single, off the cuff, sentence contained so much hope. On the other side of the door at that very moment Harry Potter was leaning against the wall. Trying to put together a puzzle with no picture on it. She had called him "sweetheart". It had seemed so natural that he had barely noticed it. Now it was all he could think about. Slowly something in the back of his mind began to bloom. Something he couldn't quiet see yet. But he knew it was something huge. Something amazing. Something that could change his life. He swallowed the lump in his throat and head back to his apartment. He had to write Ginny a note confirming a time for their meeting. He was not looking forward to that.