This "trilogy" has suddenly mutated and grown extra stories, somewhat like an amoeba in a nuclear reactor. It's become the trilogy as defined by Douglas Adams. Don't ask me, I'm just the writer. There are three stories yet to come in the "Home" series now.

* * *

Ginny was sitting on her bed, staring out the window. The party was still going strong, but after her dance with Harry, she hadn't felt like celebrating anymore. She'd stayed long enough for her mother to notice how tired she looked.

"When did you get to bed last night? Oh, for heaven's sake! Go inside, go to bed--that's not a request, Virginia Weasley!"

Ginny was happy enough to follow orders. She felt like a deflated balloon. She'd been looking forward to this evening all summer, convinced that finally--finally--Harry would come back, and he would look at her, and . . .

Well, he'd come back. He'd looked at her. And he'd said, "Thanks for the dance, Ginny," and walked away.

The worst of it was that he'd almost--well, almost everything. Almost really looked at her, almost taken what she was offering, almost kissed her, for heaven's sake!

Ginny flopped backwards on her bed, making the old springs creak, and covered her face with the pillow. "Almost only counts in horseshoes and Earthquake Curses," she mumbled into the down, and then flung it aside.

"Hot chocolate," she decided. Never mind that it was the middle of bloody July, she wanted hot chocolate. She considered making it magically, but half the comfort of hot chocolate was the process, so she pushed her feet into her slippers and crept downstairs.

She was almost to the kitchen when she heard Hermione's voice.

"She loves you, Harry."

"She'll get over it. That'll be the best thing for her."

Almost involuntarily, Ginny sank to the steps. They were talking about her.

"No woman gets over this," Hermione argued. "She wants to be with you--wherever you are."

"I know," and his voice was wondering. "How can she? I told you what my life is like now--and I know she was listening when I was telling her uncle earlier. Vampires and werewolves and rogue Death Eaters--God, Hermione, it never stops! How can she want to go into that, and how can she think I'd take her?"

"Oh, for the love of Merlin, Harry!You heard Mrs. Weasley--Ginny's as much able as you are to deal with all that--maybe even more. Besides, haven't you ever heard the phrase, two heads are better than one?"

Harry's voice was flat, refusing argument. "It's too dangerous."

Hermione argued anyway. "She's faced danger with you before. She saved your life before." There was a long silence, and then Hermione said in a softer voice, "You're breaking her heart, Harry."

"Better than breaking her."

Another silence. "Did you know, Harry, that you can't look at me when you lie now?"

"I'm not lying, Hermione. I'd rather she be in England, and safe, than somewhere else and dead."

"But you're also not telling me all your reasons for doing this to her."

Ginny held her breath, actually clamping her hands over her mouth lest any sound escape.

Harry's answer, when it came, was almost under his breath. "She--terrifies me, Hermione."

Ginny's eyes went wide.

"Terrifies you? What on earth do you mean?"

"She loves me so much, Hermione. And I'd say, how can anyone love like that, except--I love her the same way."

Something like an earthquake shook her entire body, but only a tiny squeak escaped her mouth, and that was muffled by her hands.

"And if anything happened to her--I mean anything, Hermione--I honestly don't know what would become of me. Not only--" he had to stop. "Not only because she would be hurt--or--or worse--but that I had done it to her--"

"It's not the Middle Ages," Hermione said sensibly, "and she's not a princess in a tower. She can handle herself."

"You're not going to talk me out of this, Hermione," Harry warned.

"I think I could," Hermione said. "I think I could very easily." She sighed. "It's your call, of course. But I hope you know you're throwing away the best thing that ever happened to you or Ginny."

"To me, perhaps."

There was another long silence, which gave Ginny time to swallow the heart that had leapt into her throat and get her breathing back to normal. Then Hermione said in an obvious changing-the-subject voice, "Look, the party's still going on--let's go out and have some more to eat, all right?"

"You go on. It's late, and I want to get an early start."

"You're not leaving again! You just arrived this morning!"

"I've already been here too long." There was the scraping sound of a chair being pushed back, and Ginny leapt to her feet and flew up the steps, silently blessing the Anti-Creaking Charm her mum had laid on them only a few days before.

She stood, breathless, in the midddle of her darkened room until she heard his feet approaching her door. They paused, and she thought, He isn't coming in!

But then there was a sigh, and the footsteps continued, up and away towards Ron's room.

"Lumos," she whispered, and her wand-tip sparked to life. She looked around the room she had been a child in.

Then, going to her closet, she took a battered rucksack that had once been Charlie's off the top shelf and began to pack.

* * *

She was nearly all night at it. Below her window, the party started dying down around the wee hours. When the last lamp had been extinguished and only Fred and Angelina remained, slow-dancing to some invisible orchestra, Ginny finally straightened up and stretched her arms above her head.

She'd initially overpacked, and then realized that Harry's life was so mobile she couldn't take much more than one rucksack. But she needed extra robes, and soap, and toothpaste, and--

Finally she'd managed to pare it down to precisely what would fit. Now to make him understand.

She looked up at the ceiling and thought about waking him up. But--Ron was asleep in there too, as were a few cousins. She didn't fancy the idea of trying to talk him into taking her with all of them hanging on.

Maybe it was partly cowardice, too. Or maybe it was the determination not to let him have second thoughts.

She set her alarm for dawn and curled into her bed with a long sigh that ended in a little snore.

* * *

Orange light was filling her eyelids, and she thought, There's something wrong with that--

Morning.

It was the kind of light that accompanied full morning, not just dawn, and that was bad for some reason, because people left at--

Oh, god.

Ginny sat up, fully awake in a quarter of a second. Oh god! What if she'd missed him?

She nearly dove into the hard-wearing robes and sturdy shoes she'd picked out the night before, and snatched her rucksack and broomstick on her way out the door.

Her mother looked up from the stove as she came into the kitchen. "Was that you thundering down the stairs, dear?"

"Where's Harry?" Ginny blurted. "Has he gone yet?"

"How did you know he was leaving?"

"Has he gone yet?"

"Well--yes--he left just a moment ago, Ron and Hermione walked out with him--" Her mother's eyes alit on her rucksack, and then flickered to her broom, held in the other hand. "Ginny--what are you doing with that? Are you going somewhere?"

Ginny swallowed. This was going to be hard, even with the speech she'd practiced over and over during her packing. "Mum--you know how you've always said I could do anything I wanted to do?"

Her mother nodded slowly, puzzled.

Ginny's hand stole up to her throat, where she still wore the pearl her mother had given her before the wedding. "Well--when it comes right down to it--all I want is to be with Harry."

"Ginny--" her mum trembled.

"And I'm going to be." Ginny flung her arms around her mother and kissed her on the cheek. "I love you, Mum--but I need him. And he needs me." She pulled back. "You do understand--don't you?"

Lip quivering, her mum nodded. "They were going out toward Ottery St. Catchpole a little way."

"Thank you. I'll write--I promise." Ginny gave her mum another hard hug and spun to dart across the kitchen, shove open the door, and leap over the steps. Was she too late? Oh, don't let me be too late!

She saw only Ron and Hermione at first and for a moment her heart stopped. Then she saw the untidy mop of white-speckled black hair a little in front of them, and her heart began beating again. She sprinted past them, not even slowing when Ron called out, "Oi, where are you going?"

She skidded to a stop in front of Harry. "Where are we going first?" she asked brightly, trying to pretend she wasn't wholly out of breath, both from exertion and pure fear.

"First . . ." he said uncertainly. "We? Ginny, what are you on about?"

He was trying his best to sound puzzled, but he knew perfectly well what she meant. She set her jaw. "I heard you talking to Hermione last night," she said. "In the kitchen."

His face closed up and his eyes flickered away. "That was--about something else--"

"You're a horrible liar," she said flatly.

Before he could make an answer to that, she continued, "I didn't need to overhear you talking to Hermione to know how you feel. She's right, you're a terrible liar, especially to me. And do you really think that I've never been scared senseless by how much I love you? D'you think I'm always comfortable with this? I'm not, you know. But I want to be with you, even if it does terrify me sometimes."

He opened his mouth, then closed it again. She was breaking through.

She hurried on. "I know that when you told me you wouldn't take me until I left Hogwarts, you meant me to forget about this. But Harry, I won't. If you won't take me with you, I'll follow you--through hell and ice and the end of the world if necessary. I promise you, Harry Potter, you'll never be lonely again."

"You belong here, Ginny," he said in a fractured voice.

"I belong with you. Haven't you ever heard that home is where the heart is, Harry? You've got my heart. You are my home. And if you'll let me, I'll be yours."

There was a long, long silence.

"Where are we going?" she said again.

He looked at her, finally, but she couldn't read his eyes. After a tiny eternity, he said, "Choose."

Relief crashed through her in a great wave, and she could feel a smile blooming over her face. "Paris," she said. "I've always wanted to see Paris."

He nodded, and there was a kind of warm relief in his eyes too. He held up his hands, palm out, fingers spread. "Hold on tight," he said.

She fitted her hands to his, palm to palm, fingers weaving together. "I always have."

She could hear voices outside their circle of two, but her entire world had shrunk to the green of Harry's eyes. "On my three," he said. "One . . . two . . ."

And at long last, her life began.