Disclaimer: Oh, how I wish I owned them all…

A/N: I tried this once, and I didn't like how it came out. So I'm trying it again. Instead of one chapter, I lengthened the story out a bit. Plus I gave Ginny a bit more spunk. She was a little too damsel-in-distress in the original version. Thanks, though, to the three who reviewed the first try: Mariah, Tanja, HJWG. And now, round two!

"A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her…but she can never forgive him for the sacrifices she makes on her account." – W. Somerset Maugham

The clock has stopped.

That's what woke me, sitting straight up in my bed. He used to tell me he would wake from nightmares just like that, covered in sweat and bolting upright. For a moment I glanced to the side, my lips opened to say his name. Then I paused, and shook my head. I only woke once to find him beside me, when the hands of the clock first began to tick.

So why was I surprised he's not here?

At first I wandered the house, looking for the source of my confusion. Everyone else was still sleeping, except I could hear Fleur mumbling in her dreams from Bill's room, moaning "Gabrielle!" Mum won't let them move out. She has two sons away from home, maybe never coming back. With Percy still refusing to acknowledge the family, and Ron chasing the tattered remains of a monster's human soul, it was a miracle she let me go to school at all. And now that school is done, I won't be straying too far from the Burrow until the war ends, or at least next school year. But I don't take it personally. The entire family is under the tyranny of her terror, even the twins agreeing to come every night because we can't bear to see her cry again.

It was when I walked into the kitchen, knowing I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, that I finally realized what was wrong.

The clock on the wall still moves, hands with Weasley faces pointing to mortal peril. It gives me an odd kind of comfort. At least if we're fighting for our lives, we're still alive. Fleur's beautiful face has been added, right beside Bill's deeply scarred one. I look at my own name, and swallow hard. Sometimes I wish there was a hand beside mine, with green eyes and messy black hair. At other times I'm grateful Mum didn't put him there. Then, even if he isn't coming home, I can hold on to hope for a little while more.

No, the clock that stopped never hung on a wall. It doesn't keep time, exactly. Not time for the rest of the world. Only time for me, and him. It doesn't tick inside my head, but in my chest. It hides where I have always hidden it, behind my heart.

I wish I could say it started the first time. Through a crowd, our eyes met, and he knew, and I knew. Like magic.

But it wasn't like that.

It wasn't love at first sight. It's not that simple. It shouldn't be that simple. If it were simple, would we run to it, hide from it, live for it, die for it?

It didn't hit me like a bolt of lightning. It didn't hit him at all. At first, he was just a confused boy with untidy black hair and round glasses, all alone in the crowd.

Then I saw his eyes. As Ron disappeared through a solid barrier, something I'd seen every year as my brothers went away, those green eyes widened with delighted wonder. For a moment, through his eyes, the world I always took for granted became something knew, something special and…magical.

Too young to understand, I just knew I wanted to see the world like that, too.

Then Fred and George told us who he was. The Boy Who Lived. Famous Harry Potter. And he was transformed into something beyond a boy with different eyes. He became something shining and heroic, someone to admire.

But no…it didn't start there.