Harry Potter slammed his apartment door open and threw his keys into a bowl on a black wooden table that stood on his right side by the door. The apartment was nothing special and Ron had asked him on several occasions why he would not buy a better place since he had so much money. Every time, Harry would say that he did not like the thought of having a big apartment or house for himself. He would simply feel far too lonely. Lonelier than he actually was.
The walls were black, they had originally been lime green, but Harry had since the war figured that his new favourite colour was black. That decision would later dominate his small apartment. Mrs Weasley had of course not reacted the best way to his colour decision. She had one day while Harry was at work decorated the whole apartment with knitted flowers simply to brighten up things a bit for him.
A black leather sofa was placed in the middle of the room with a couple of newspapers around it because Harry had been too lazy to throw them away when he had read them. Other than the newspapers on the couch, his apartment was pretty much immaculate.
With a loud thud, Harry sat down and slouched on the couch, going over the newest of the old newspapers seeing as he had no other interesting things to do. Well, except for having a social life, but the sofa was of course more tempting at the time.
It had been about four years since the war and Harry Potter had seen his therapist for a little more than a year. He did not mind the therapist, he just never liked the idea of needing help to sort out his feelings, he almost felt mentally unstable.
The therapist was a lovely old woman who always kept a bowl of biscuits on her desk for her patients. She was so lovely that Harry had trusted her and told her things that had troubled him for the past years.
She was, of course, the person he saw the most of, although he loved his friends, he always felt like a third wheel. Moreover, he could not bear to see the Weasleys more than necessary because he still felt as if he was the one who killed Fred.
Over the course of the last four years, Harry had been in a few romantic relationships in the hope that he could love again. However, the only thing the relationships had left him with was, however, loneliness and jealousy from Ginny's part.
Sometimes he wondered if he was suitable for romantic relationships. Something he probably was not.
Harry got up from the sofa, walked towards the kitchen and gathered eggs, milk and flour, and cooked four pancakes, which he ate while watching the blue sky outside his kitchen window. His thoughts wandered and he felt an emptiness in his heart, his only thoughts were how he very much felt like crying.
It was the 31st of July and even if it was his birthday, he had no one to spend the day with, he did, of course, have the Weasleys and his friends, but it just felt far too awkward. Loneliness was his worst enemy and he had lived with it for the past years, for far too long.
He felt a slight tingle in his stomach that distracted him from his thoughts, followed by a crack from the distance, which Harry assumed was someone apparating to his front door.
The sound of the door handle of the black apartment door turning and the door opening later answered his assumptions.
For a moment, Harry just stood by his kitchen table nibbling on his pancake, but as the person did not make a sound when entering, he grew suspicious, grabbed his wand, and walked over to the living room.
"Hello?" Harry said, cautiously walking out of the kitchen.
Still, no sound came from the living room; in fact, there was no sound of even a breath from the living room. The living room was empty, yet the door was open and his thoughts immediately fled to the conclusion that a person was still with him in his apartment, hiding.
Behind him, Harry could hear light footsteps approaching him, turning around at the speed of light; Harry directed his wand at the person who had sneaked upon him.
He was immediately hit by the familiar scent of flowers he remembered from the burrow and he soon realised who the person was.
A black hood that covered everything but the person's lips covered the person's face. Slowly, Harry removed the black hood to reveal the face of the intruder. Behind the hood, a smiling redhead came to view ...
"You should have seen your face!" Ginny said, laughing, giving Harry a hug. "I mean, you looked as if you had seen a ghost!" Ginny let go of Harry and continued laughing while Harry shifted back and forth on his feet.
Eventually, Ginny stopped laughing and wiped away the tears that had formed when she had laughed. "I'm sorry," Ginny said, still withholding her laughter.
Harry dug his hands into his jean pockets and looked around the black room with the occasional knitted flowers. "It's fine," - Harry said - "How have you been?"
Ginny's freckled face looked tanned, and her red hair seemed somewhat lighter. She wore a bohemian skirt and Harry started to wonder whether she had been on a vacation in Italy or Spain.
"I'm doing well," said Ginny, examining Harry's emotionless face. "I've been to Aruba the last couple of weeks with Hermione and Luna. I decided to leave a couple of minutes ago; I thought you might have wanted some company on your birthday."
"You did?" Harry asked confused, he would never have thought that anyone from the Weasley family would wish to celebrate his birthday after the terrible thing he did to Fred several years earlier.
Ginny cracked a smile, "Yes, silly." She gave him another hug and whispered into his ear calmly, "I wanted some cake, you see."
Harry put on a fake smile and said, "Well, that explains it."
Letting go of Harry, Ginny walked over to the kitchen and searched the fridge for a cake or anything sweet that could resemble a cake. She soon realised that there was no cake and decided to make one with the few things Harry had in his fridge.
"Why don't you have any cake in your fridge?" Ginny asked while cracking some eggs with her hands.
"Do you have a cake in your fridge?" he asked, walking into the kitchen where he found to his surprise, Ginny, making a cake by hand.
Ginny turned her head around, raised her eyebrow and seriously said, "Of course. It's a must in every house."
Harry slouched down on one of the kitchen chairs while gazing at Ginny while she stirred together the cake batter.
About two hours later, the two sat on the black leather sofa together, catching up. Harry told Ginny about how his job was adventurous and never boring and Ginny told Harry about her Quidditch career and how Mr Weasley attempted to figure out the function of a rubber duck.
An odd smell hit Harry and he frowned. He sniffed the air and thought it smelled a little like burned cake.
The smell hadn't failed to reach Ginny either as her eyes seemed to widen to double the size, just before she jumped up from the sofa and ran over to the kitchen after cursing.
Upon seeing Ginny's reaction, Harry withheld a laugh and followed her to the kitchen where thick smoke surrounded them.
Only seconds later, the fire alarm rang, which made Ginny panic as she had tried to take the cake of the oven with her bare hands.
"Mugglefucking-trollshit!" screamed Ginny as the sound of the cake falling to the ground rang in Harry's ears together with the fire alarm.
Harry quickly fished out his wand from the pocket of his jeans and pointed it towards each window in his apartment, opening them one at a time.
He then pointed his wand at the cake and said, "Aguamenti!"
The cake cooled down slightly and smoke stopped coming from it after a while.
Meanwhile, Ginny attempted to turn on the sink with her burning hands. And after a lot of pain, the sound of water from the sink was heard and Ginny winced slightly at the touch of water on her burned skin.
With a flick of his wand, the burned cake together with the cake tin vanished and so did the burned stain that the cake had left.
When Ginny's hands were all wrapped up in bandages, she smiled foolishly before laughing at how stupid of a scene they had made moments earlier.
How, when or why they agreed to go to a bar half an hour later was unknown, but a while later they both stepped out of the block and into the busy muggle streets of London.