She returned to Hogwarts in the fall and almost expected to find Dumbledore sitting at the Head's table, his blue eyes twinkling happily. But instead, the new Headmistress sat in his place, her lips pulled into a tight single line when she welcomed them back for another year.

The Great Hall seemed emptier every day.

There was no Quidditch that year, (too dangerous for that many people to be gathered into one place) so Ginny and all the other students attended classes, studied, and practiced defense late into the night. Students were routinely pulled out of class to find that brothers, sisters, parents, and friends had been murdered by Death Eaters, or tortured until they could no longer remember they even were wizards.

It was December when Ginny was pulled out of Charms and escorted to the Headmistress's office where she knew bad news awaited her. She wasn't surprised. Her mother had always said big families don't do well in wars.

As the Headmistress told her of his final moments, she stared at the palm of her hand and tried to count all the lines so she could lose herself in the consistency of one number following quietly, expectedly after the other.

She used to have six brothers - now she had four. It was easier somehow when she thought of it that way, when she didn't attach the names and the faces to the numbers.

-

Ginny was still at Hogwarts when it closed that spring. Somehow, a group of Inferi had made it past the borders of Hogwarts. Ginny was eating in the Great Hall when they rushed through the heavy oaken doors. Without thinking, Ginny cast a protection charm on all the first and second years she could see before walking toward the Inferi with her eyes blazing.

A few older students joined Ginny and the professors as they attacked the familiar faces one by one. She had been the one to hex Cedric and the one to end Percy's second life, despite the appeal he made to live.

"You're dead," she told him. "But I wanted to tell you that we never hated you and that we always would have forgiven you."

The Inferius just looked at her blankly from inside her brother's corpse.

"Incendio," she said.

When her family asked her about the attack, she conveniently forgot to mention that one of the Inferi had been using her brother's body.

-

Like at Charlie's funeral, Ginny sat between George and Fred at Percy's. She couldn't help but stare at all of the Ministry wizards, but her expression softened instinctively when her eyes reached Penelope. She looked on for a while at the sight of her face, blotchy enough to rival the face of Ginny's mother. She knew then that they had been in love. She could tell by the empty look in her eyes. She remembered the time that she had unknowingly ran into Percy and Penelope with their arms around each other and their mouths connected and wondered if either of them had ever thought (for the slightest second) if they'd ever be apart.

She watched Ron as tears began to fall from his eyes and then noticed her cheeks were wet as well. Fred and George held her hands tightly; she didn't want to look, but she could tell they were crying too. She tried to focus on something that didn’t matter, like the texture of the ministry ceiling, but it just reminded her that Charlie’s funeral was outside and they had wanted Percy’s to be too, but he worked for the Minister and Ministry employees had their funerals indoors. She counted floor tiles but because she knew they were cold, she just kept coming back to Percy’s lifeless body, no longer warm, hidden by an expensive marble casket.

She watched as a few wizards from the Ministry spoke about her one brother who kept his life private, except for his proudest moments - 12 O.W.L.S., his spot as Head Boy, his job at the Ministry. Percy was always the most independent of the seven. When Ginny was younger, she always saw herself as Number Seven, the one who broke the even set. But now, sitting with her remaining brothers, she realized that it had always been Ginny and Ron, Fred and George, Percy, Charlie and Bill.

She later heard that Penelope had been there when Percy was killed, that she was holding his hand when his heart stopped beating, that she picked up his wand and single-handedly caught the Death Eater who killed him, that in eight short months, she would name her son after his father–at that, Ginny wanted to cry. But she was glad that Percy's son would have one parent there to love him.

-

Ginny kept a diary through the war that she wrote in every night after her parents had gone to sleep. She sat with it, her quill hurriedly scraping the pages in the light of the fireplace. She sat between different Order members who'd always ask her what she was writing. Eulogies, she'd say. Futures, with a smile. The lives of people who aren't around to finish them. They'd leave her alone after that and just sit quietly, listening to her quill scratch against already-full pages.

A few years later, she'd read the stories aloud to Percy's son as they coaxed him to bed and much later still, she'd read them to Percy's two grandsons who grew up to be so proud of their Grandad Percy and his brothers, who fought in the war to take down the dark wizard named Tom Riddle.

-

She caught Harry's eye at the funeral, and he cast a sad glance in her direction that said, "I'm sorry about everything." But she couldn’t face him then. She just looked the other way.

-

She saw the tired witches and wizards who returned to Headquarters late at night with blood dripping from still-open wounds or twitching in the aftermath of the cruciatius curse, too proud to take their injuries to St. Mungo's.

Every day, she prayed that none of her remaining brothers or Harry or Hermione would come in like that. She only wanted to see them if they were smiling, together, whole.

She got her wish that Christmas.

Ginny helped her mother decorate for their second Christmas at Number 12 Grimmuald Place. She hung stockings from the mantle and no one commented when she hung Charlie's or Percy's in the place they had hung the year before. She knew they still belonged there.

Fred and George were the first to arrive and brought with them boxes of their latest inventions to give out as gifts. Bill and Fleur arrived shortly after them with a few red and green boxes of homemade candies sent over by Fleur's mother. Penelope, with her stomach much bigger than it had been at Percy's funeral, was escorted by Remus and Tonks. Ron, Harry, and Hermione arrived last; half-way through dinner, but no one seemed to mind.

-

The following night, Ginny resumed her daily routine of scratching word after word into her torn diary. She was so intent on the paragraph she was working on that she hadn’t heard him get up from his spot on the other couch until he was standing in front of her.

"Can we talk?" he asked.

Slowly, she nodded to his question and closed the diary. Hermione looked over with a knowing smile that Ginny tried her best to ignore. She followed him and tried to pay more attention to the feel of her bare feet on the cold floor than the body walking in front of her. As they left the room, she absentmindedly rubbed her bare arms, wishing she had grabbed the sweater her mother made her for Christmas.

He stepped into Sirius's old room and closed the door behind them. Before she could think or breathe, she felt his lips against hers. They were warm, like his skin, she realized when his arms encircled her. She felt her own arms drape around his neck and pull him closer. She closed her eyes and tried to memorize his chapped lips, the way his tongue brushed quietly against hers, the way his hands felt against her bare arms. Of course she didn’t notice that when Harry pulled away, it took all the willpower he had. She only noticed that felt a strange sense of loss when his lips left hers, like somehow he had taken part of her with him. The sound of their heavy breathing sounded even louder in Ginny’s ears as they just looked at each other.

Then Harry broke the silence.

"I want to tell you everything," he said.

She nodded because she couldn’t trust her voice.

Harry told her about their trip to Godric's Hollow and how beautiful his parents' graves looked. He explained the "pieces of Voldemort's soul” and told her that three of them were already destroyed--the ring, the diary and Hufflepuff's goblet. He told her about the mysterious note signed R.A.B. and the fake horcrux that cost Dumbledore his life and about the journey they took to destroy the goblet and made her promise not to tell her mother that if it hadn't been for Hermione's quick thinking and careful knowledge of spells, they wouldn't have made it out alive.

He told her what Dumbledore had said about Voldemort underestimating the power of a soul that is still whole and human and confided in her that he still didn't understand how he could possibly use the power of love to defeat Voldemort.

They sat in silence again. The room was dim and she could barely make out the green of his eyes.

"I can't just sit and wait," she said.

"But I need you to be safe." The green of his eyes pleaded with her, trying to make her understand that he needed her--alive--that he needed to come back to her when this was all over, that he loved her even though he was too afraid to say it aloud.

"I--Harry, I'm not safe here. Nowhere is safe anymore. Dumbledore's gone, Hogwarts is closed, Charlie died at Bill's wedding while we were dancing, Percy died while Penelope was holding his hand. We were attacked by Inferi in the Great Hall,” she said in a rush with tears falling from her eyes. Her breath caught in her throat, but she continued anyway. "And I'm going to join The Order when I turn seventeen."

Awkwardly, he pulled her towards his chest and stroked her hair. She was glad when he didn't lie to her and that everything was okay, that it would be okay. She was glad when he didn't tell her to stop crying.

When Ginny woke up the next morning, they had already left. She saw her diary sitting closed atop her desk with the fake horcrux resting on top of it.