A/N: For my wonderful friend TheWordsInMyHead, love you to pieces darling! A part of the Harry and Ginuary Gift Exchange.

The busy streets of Magical London in August just before the sun finally starts to sink in the sky give Harry a sense of what a can of sardines must feel like, cramped, slimy, and surrounded by a stench that he doesn't want to name. He has realized over the last ten years of having to come into the city that he hates it, but growing up in Godric's Hollow, out in the sprawling green of Gloucestershire, one can hardly blame him for it. Harry reminds himself for the umpteenth time that he'll be out of it in just an hour or so. He's only here to grab a few things, stopping at those specialty shops that won't survive unless they place themselves in the middle of the largest group of people they can find. It's when he turns the corner towards one such shop, the only place he's ever found that makes broomstick polish that doesn't stain his clothes, that he collides into her.

He doesn't realize it's her at first, gripping the person's shoulders to keep them both from falling, but then she cries out to apologize and he freezes because he knows that voice. He hasn't heard it in ten years, but it's like he's seventeen all over again and Harry looks down and she's staring up at him with her lips parted like she might have continued her apology until she realized exactly who she was looking at.

"Gin."

As if her name is an incantation, the images from his last year at Hogwarts come rushing back to him. Lying out on the grounds with Ginny in his arms. Quidditch practices, after Quidditch practices, her lips on his, searing, frantic. The stress of his NEWT year, being Gryffindor's Quidditch captain, the newness to their relationship wearing off, the fighting, the night they decided it was best to call it off, best to let him go out and start his life, best to let her finish her NEWT year without a long-distance boyfriend, best to bring it all to an end. They were seventeen and sixteen and while letters from home had helped a little in the fights, Harry feels like they were both ill-prepared to try and work through anything without someone coaching them through it. They were so young.

"Harry." She smiles up at him, though he notices her eyes look as far away as he feels.

"Hi," he finally manages to whisper before they're jostled and shoved against the building to his right. Instinctively he pulls her into him to keep her shoulder from also hitting the rough bricks. That action brings more memories, more images, more of Ginny rushing back to his mind as he smells that flowery scent again for the first time in a decade. Merlin, they had been so young.

"Hi," she pulls back, and Harry realizes he's holding her far too close. They aren't seventeen and sixteen anymore and trying to be together. He's twenty-seven and she'll be twenty-six at the end of the week; they're past that part of their lives.

He drops his arms and she pulls away entirely and Harry can't begin to describe the ache in his chest. It's almost like when they called it off at the end of his seventh year, but that had a feeling of relief, knowing she'd be happier mixed in with the hurt and the frustration. This time, all those feelings are replaced with this overwhelming desire to pull her back.

"How, er, how have you been?" It's a silly question, he's still best mates with Ron, he knows roughly, vaguely, how her life has gone - small things like her Quidditch career and how mad she was when Ron and Hermione chose to elope - but it's the only question he can think to ask.

He realizes a second too late his hand is already in his hair. She smiles though and he can't help but smile back.

"I've been good, and you?"

"Good," he nods and then they stand there, staring at each other in silence as London whizzes around them. It only takes London ten seconds to jostle them again though and it seems to bring both of them back to reality.

"Well," she hesitates, looking him in the eye a moment longer before she starts again, "I should probably-"

"Of course, sorry," Harry steps back, "It was good to see you."

"You too," she bites her lip and Harry receives a new rush of emotions as that image comes back to him in so many different situations from their roughly eight months together.

She brushes his arm as she steps past him and Harry unconsciously breathes her in before she disappears around the corner.

Gone.

Again.

He's in an off mood for the rest of the day as he runs his errands, and he blames it on the city. He blames it on one of the stores being out of what he wanted. He blames it on the heat of the day. He blames it on everything other than the glaring fact that he saw Ginny again.

Because she's just an ex-girlfriend. He has a few of those now, it's nothing out of the ordinary, everyone has an ex or a few, so it isn't seeing Ginny that's caused this feeling that everything in his life is wrong.

It's the long week he's having. It's how work has been stressing him out lately. It's the way the big city affected him today.

It has nothing to do with Ginny.

Besides, he reasons, we were so young back then; we've grown apart as we've grown older.

Merlin, they'd been kids! Blowing everything out of proportion, seeing only as far as the end of the next hour, too scared to really be open with each other, too inexperienced to realize they needed to be; he's amazed that they made it the eight months they did because he's rather ashamed of a lot of his behavior from his teens. His family assures him it's how most everyone feels; being a teenager is no one's forte. But Harry knows he hurt people; he hurt Ginny, and that's a sour pill to swallow. But he pushes it away to try and focus on making himself some dinner. It's not like he can go back and fix it.

Harry stops midway from setting the pan on the hot pad as his brain latches on to the flippant thought, racing through ideas from letters of apology to showing up on her front doorstep.

"No." He says it out loud, though it's only him in his little two-bedroom home. He isn't going to go barging back in on her life, for all he knows she has a boyfriend.

To his great surprise, the monster in his chest from when he was a teenager comes roaring back to life as if it hadn't been dead and gone since he and Ginny broke up.

Harry had attributed its absence to him growing up, maturing, becoming better, because it hadn't come back after Ginny. He mutters darkly at the feeling, trying to banish it away. He's not jealous. He's not that type. He's secure. Trusting. An adult more importantly.

Besides, Ginny isn't his!

He groans and sets the pan down to dish himself his dinner. He needs to stop. This train of thought is only going to drive him mad, and probably make him do something stupid; he is James Potter's son, after all, so the odds are high he'll do something that he'll wish he hadn't.

The battle is fought all evening, but it's a lost cause because his mind has decided to be a Pensieve, playing their whole relationship through his head again and again and again. He can't help but realize he's never done this with the other women he's dated. Even on the occasions he's run into them after they've ended things, he's always been able to brush it off within a few hours.

It's guilt, he reasons. He was a self-centered, inconsiderate teenager; he was older than her and should have known better; he knows that he hurt her and he's feeling guilty for that because he never properly apologized to her for it. Even when they broke up, he didn't apologize. Yes, that's what this is, it's guilt; if he can apologize to her, it will go away. And so, he pulls out a paper and pen and sits down to write.

A letter is a pretty regular task, tedious even, but as Harry sits at his little table, it feels more difficult than spell manipulation, something he does on the daily for work. The pen seems heavy in his hand and his mind slows, unable to come up with the words to put on the page.

"Well, write her name," He chides himself, but even that action feels heavy as his pen loops the G and dots the I and adds the comma after the N. He briefly wonders if he should write out Ginny and not Gin, but he never really called her by anything else when they were together. To the point that his whole family only called her Gin as well - something he never thought to ask if she minded. But it was all because 'Ginny' was Ron's baby sister; 'Gin' was his.

Harry pushes his hands into his hair and groans. He's twenty-seven years old! He should be able to write a simple apology!

Again he picks up the pen and this time forces himself to start.

Gin,

Seeing you today, it reminded me of how I was. Mostly what a prat I was when we were dating. I wanted to apologize. I should have apologized the moment I saw you today. I should have apologized back then. I know it's been ten years, that this is very past due, but I am sorry. You didn't deserve any of the rubbish I dished out, and I wish this wasn't such a late apology, but late or not, you deserve to have it. Hope life is well, and happy birthday Sunday.

Harry

He reads it ten times before he forces himself to fold it up and attach it to Hedwig's leg. "If you don't find her just take it to the Burrow. I have no idea where she's living now." Hedwig tilts her head at him like he's stating the obvious, which he realizes he is. Harry sighs and opens the window. "Off you go then."

Hedwig floats out into the night and Harry expects to feel lighter, which he does, but what he doesn't expect is how his mind won't let Gin go. Now though, instead of the feelings of all the things he did wrong, his mind plays all of the good things over and over again.

The laughter - he doesn't think he's laughed as much since then - their private jokes, the way she'd roll her eyes anytime someone said something she found tedious or ridiculous, how quickly she caught onto everything, from course work to their friends' problems she always seemed to get to the heart of things, her smile going soft when he'd whisper in her ear, her small hand in his, her lips pressed against his, her body tucked up against his, her blazing brown eyes staring up at him with fire, the nights where they would talk until four in the morning in the common room while they stole kisses, and it would always end with him finding excuses to have her run her fingers through his hair because it was just the most calming feeling in the world to have her fingernails run along his scalp.

The memories invade his dreams that night, and Harry can't honestly say he minds. Ginny was always fire and blazing, and when things were good between them he basked in the glow of her bright smiles and the warmth of her very presence.

But it's passed now, he reminds himself the next morning, even as his mind tries to replay a particularly happy hour spent down by the lake. She's certainly moved on, it's been ten years after all, and while he might be unattached right now, he has moved on too. He tries to think of the other women, the ones he's been with since Ginny, but the memories have to be dredged out of the archives of his mind, dusted off, held up to the light, and even then they're fuzzy.

It's because I saw her. He tries to reassure himself. If I hadn't seen her it would be just as hard to remember her. But that feels like a lie and he knows it probably is because the truth of the matter is that he's always been able to pull the memories of Gin out at any moment he cares. Thinking it through, as he's getting ready for work, he realizes that he's actually pulled these memories with Gin forward more often than most of his memories.

But it's only because so much reminds him of her.

She plays for the Holyhead Harpies, so Quidditch is always a reminder of Ginny. Red usually reminds him of her hair, comparing if it's brighter or duller or darker or lighter than the bright red that he thinks of as Gin's. Half of Britain has freckles and so he remembers hers just about any moment he's close enough to see someone's freckled face. She always bought Fizzing Whizzbees to eat while she revised and so anytime he sees them he thinks of her while his mouth waters, whether from the candy or the memories of her eating them he isn't sure. The list goes on and on. The girl is simply everywhere.

She isn't a girl anymore, though. His mind pulls back to looking down at the woman she'd become. Yesterday, his hands on her shoulders, when he pulled her into him to shield her from the wall they were pushed into, she didn't feel like the slight teenager she'd been ten years ago. She'd grown into herself, in so many ways, her face was more confident now, it lacked that desperate need to prove herself, and while she was still about the same height, her body had finally caught up with the height, filling in her curves and making it very obvious she wasn't a sixteen-year-old anymore.

In frustration, Harry shoves his hand into his hair and pulls, trying to gain control over his wandering thoughts. That's when Hedwig taps on the window and Harry's heart stops for a full second when he sees that she has a letter attached to her leg.

Slowly he opens the window and removes the letter, breathing in relief that it isn't the one he sent out but feeling the anxiety build from the writing on the front of it. It's from Gin, her handwriting still so familiar to him even after all this time, and he chuckles at the drops of ink her quill splattered near the corner of the parchment.

Harry,

Thank you. I'm sorry too, I know I wasn't the easiest to put up with back then either. I'm impressed you remembered my birthday, it's been a really long time. What are you up to these days?

Gin

Harry stares at the note, trying to determine his feelings because they are coming at him in a rush right now and he can't sort them out individually. He can, however, look at the pieces of what's happened so far. It's the same process he uses when deconstructing spells, and it's the only thing he can think to do as he stares at her pretty handwriting.

She wrote him back. He thinks this is the first thing to examine. He didn't expect a response. He's not sure he wanted one, but now that he has one, he's rather glad of it. It seems important somehow that he can converse with her, even if it's just mundane pleasantries via owl.

She accepted his apology. That's the next thing he thinks on, and he's able to pull out that he's relieved because he wasn't sure she would.

She apologized as well. This is more difficult to decipher how he feels about it. While he knows it takes two to tango, so to speak, he definitely feels he's more to blame than she. Still, her apology brings a small smile to his face, and even though he doesn't think he deserves it, he's appreciative that she felt to do so.

He impressed her by remembering her birthday. This feeling is a little easier to identify: embarrassment. He wished her a happy birthday and it's been a decade since they saw each other. It's a miracle that she's only impressed because he's aware of how obsessed it must look that in ten years he hasn't forgotten her birthday. Regardless of the fact that she doesn't seem to think it weird, he still shifts uncomfortably as he reads that line.

It's the last line of her letter that leaves Harry the most internally unsure of what he wants to do. Her last line, the question of what he's up to, it's an open invitation to contact her again, to respond to the letter, to not go another ten years without knowing at least something of what's going on in the other's life. There's a part of him that wants this, wants to know if they could start a friendship after everything that's transpired, maybe let it grow into something more again, like it did the first time. But another part of his mind tells him to stay away, to write a vague response that doesn't open the door for more interaction, and finally close this part of his life.

The clock on his wall chimes and Harry sighs; his time to think this through has run out. He slips the letter into his pocket, grabs his wand, and Apparates to work.

He realizes as the day wears on that he shouldn't have brought it with him. The letter is constantly on his mind which means Gin is also constantly on his mind. The last time Gin was constantly on his mind, it was just his school marks on the line. Now it's his job.

"Harry, what is going on?" Sirius asks after he's beckoned him over.

Alright, so maybe his job isn't on the line - working for one's dad and godfather does come with its advantages.

"Sorry, I'm preoccupied, I'll focus."

"What are you preoccupied about?" James comes up behind him and Harry holds back the groan that tries to escape his lips.

"Just stuff from my school years, realizing that I haven't properly apologized to a lot of people."

His dad laughs and throws an arm around him. "Say that around your mum, you'll make her proud."

Harry laughs and Sirius ruffles his hair. "Remember that most people do move on with their lives Harry, even when offenses aren't formally acknowledged and amends made."

"You're right," Harry tries to focus on the lightness he feels with his father and godfather and tells his brain to think about Gin later.

This works for the rest of the morning, but after lunch, when he's supposed to be documenting what he went through and found this morning, his mind wanders back again and he can't seem to get a grip. The problem is that he promised his dad this would get done today, so he has to get a grip. But his mind is spinning with all the things he could tell Gin, all the things she might tell him, everything that they've missed between each other in these ten years.

I'll just write it out, he thinks as he grabs a clean sheet of paper and his pen. If he can write the letter he'll be able to work and then he can decide tonight if he's going to send the letter or not. Just because the letter is written doesn't mean it needs to be sent. He has all afternoon to decide.

Gin,

Thank you, I don't particularly think I deserved your apology, but I'm glad for it all the same. I do still remember your birthday, but I promise it isn't mapped out on a dozen different calendars around my house. However, if you do show up on my doorstep don't take it personally if I take a few minutes to open the door.

I work with Dad and Sirius, I'm sure you remember they were trying to decipher all the parts in spells when we were in school, figure out what made them work and not work. Well, the Ministry was keen to know what made dark spells work and not work and how people can manipulate them, so Dad and Sirius started contracting with them. We still do our own work to map out spells, but we now spend a lot of time working with the Aurors to pull apart dark spells, often having to work backward from what the effects were to get to the actual spell that caused it, then determining where the weak points are. I love it, but I won't keep boring you with the details.

I saw that you made the starting team a few seasons ago. Congratulations on that. Is it everything you'd dreamed? I remember it was your favorite thing to talk about back then, imagining what it would be like when you made it to the big leagues, star chaser on a top team. Where do you go from here? Planning on being the head coach now?

I'm really glad I ran into you yesterday. Well, I'm not glad I bashed into you, but I'm glad I saw you. It's been a long time.

Harry

He signs his name and feels some of the tension ease out of his neck and shoulders. He chuckles at how quickly the words came once he quipped about how he wasn't secretly obsessed with her, it felt like the way they'd joke back then. He doesn't struggle to work for the rest of the day, and he feels like a dark cloud has been lifted from over him. So much so that once he's home, he doesn't even read the letter a second time, he just ties it to Hedwig and sends it out.

He's shocked when Hedwig returns about ten at night, Gin's response tied to her leg.

Harry,

You're sure you aren't harboring stolen calendars, all with the month of August pulled out so that you can circle the eleventh on each one with a bright red pen? I think I'm actually disappointed at the thought that you don't.

Working with your dad and godfather must be fun. Not that I would want to work with my family, but your family was always a guarantee for a laugh. How is everyone on your side? I don't know if Ron keeps you abreast of what's happening with our side other than himself and Hermione, so I won't risk boring you with things you might already know.

Being a starter has been a dream come true, though I had no idea what I was really in for back then. It's so much work outside of training and games. There's the press, the briefings before and after the press, the paperwork, the reading and examining of our playbooks, the meetings. I swear it's a wonder that we manage to make it through everything in a training day.

To be honest, I don't know what's next. As long as I don't get injured and keep playing at the level I am, I probably have five to ten more years to be where I'm at with the Harpies. I've thought about coaching, but I don't know if that's really what I want after this dream is over. I was so focused on achieving this dream, that I never considered what should come next. It's funny how we forget those long-term things when we're kids. We forget that there's life after our dreams too.

But I won't let things get gloomy here, because I'm really happy we saw each other yesterday too. It's been too long, and I thought we were good friends back then. Even with how everything turned out, you were one of my favorite people.

Gin

Harry grins down at Gin's letter like a fool. It isn't the contents of the letter as much as the fact that it's there, that she's talking to him, or writing rather. But as he reads it a second and a third time, he realizes it's not just that the letter is there, it's what she said in the end, that he had been one of her favorite people, even with how they let each other go, let their relationship end. She had been one of his favorite people then, and it occurs to him that he's still more than fond of her now. So much so that before he realizes it, he's pulling a fresh sheet of paper out and sitting to respond to her letter, regardless of the fact that he should be going to bed. But then Hedwig nips at his knuckles before hopping to her cage and immediately going to sleep, and Harry realizes that if he writes this letter now, he'd want Hedwig to send it out tonight, and he should let her sleep.

He does let Hedwig sleep, putting his paper and pen away, but his thoughts keep going back to Gin, and this new sort of friendship they're forming, and it takes him far longer to fall asleep than his owl.

His imagination swings from memories of how they were to how things would be different now, and all this serves to tell him is first that he's going to be very tired in the morning and second that while he and Gin are becoming penpals, his mind doesn't think that's enough. His imagination can't unsee her from the day before, and it's really unfair to him that she had paused mid-word when he looked down because her lips were parted and he knows what it feels like to lean down when her lips are slightly parted and bring his lips to hers, slide his tongue across her bottom lip, and smirk when her breath catches before she nips on his lower lip and tells him to shut up and kiss her.

Harry gives himself a firm mental shake. How had he not realized he had never really moved on from Ginny? He tries to come up with the same sort of scenarios with the other women he's dated, and while he can bring them to mind, it's not nearly as easy as it is with Gin, and it certainly isn't bringing up the same...feelings.

Merlin, how did he never realize this before now?

The anxiety blossoms anew and Harry's now agonizing over what to do, because this could simply be his brain making the one that got away feel like more than it was. Things hadn't been all wonderful, he reminds himself. But another part of him argues that they'd been children. They'd even fought like children, over childish things. They're adults now, they've learned how to have a relationship, the give and take. Why wouldn't they work now?

On and on his mind spins as he tries to sleep, but it doesn't seem to come until nearly four in the morning and the few hours he gets are filled with dreams of Gin, dreams from their past, but also dreams that his brain creates from what he saw for that brief moment with her, how much she is no longer the sixteen-year-old girl that he held ten years ago.

In the morning he has to take a cold shower to snap himself out of it all.

How had they let it go? How had they let it slip away? How had they been so short-sighted?

Harry has no answers to these questions, and when he finishes his quick shower he knows there's no time for letter-writing before work. Which results in him being just as distracted as the day before and exhausted as well.

"I know it's Friday but would you please not mentally check out before we've finished up?" His dad laughs at him.

Harry groans, which turns into a yawn. James watches him before motioning them out of the protected room that allows them to cast all manner of spells and not accidentally destroy the building. Harry forces his eyes not to roll and follows after his dad.

"What's really going on, son?"

Harry rubs his eyes and tries to determine if he wants to bring his dad in on this or not. His gut reaction is no, but he could really use someone else's input because he's at the point where he's running circles in his head with no end in sight. Besides, he isn't a teenager anymore, he knows how to push away his more problematic feelings and ask for help.

"Harry?"

"Do you remember Ginny Weasley? Ron's little sister."

James nods, "You two dated your last year of Hogwarts."

"Well, I ran into her in London on Wednesday." Harry leans his shoulder up against the corridor wall and goes silent as he tries to figure out how to say this.

"And…?"

"And I haven't been able to stop thinking about her since." Harry stares at a random spot on the floor. "I thought it was because I'd never apologized for what a prat I was at seventeen and how I didn't treat her as well as I should have. So I wrote a short apology and sent it out. She responded and now we're becoming penpals or something, poor Hedwig has been out on the daily. But what's really bothering me is I'm starting to think that I never really moved on from Ginny when we called it off."

"What makes you think that?" James asks as he mirrors Harry's stance.

Harry presses his forehead into the wall, still struggling to make his thoughts align into words.

"I haven't been able to stop thinking about her. It's been ten years but I can still pull up all those memories like they were yesterday. Nothing feels like time has passed, whereas every other ex it's hard to bring up those old memories, and there are holes in them, things that I don't quite remember how they happened. But not with Gin, I could probably make you something like Mum's movies right now if you have a Pensieve handy because none of it is fuzzy, it would play out with perfect clarity."

Harry turns back to look at his dad and finds his square-framed eyes looking back at him with mirth.

"So write to her and ask to meet up tomorrow."

"Her birthday is Sunday, I'm sure she has plans with her teammates."

Harry watches his dad's eyebrows rise up into the bits of gray starting to mark his black hair.

"You remember her birthday?"

Harry groans and pushes his forehead back into the wall.

"Alright, don't suggest the day, just tell her you'd like to meet up and ask when it works for her. But, son, if you still feel this way about her, you won't move on until you've been able to gain some closure, whether that's getting back together or finding out the two of you have grown too far apart to make anything work."

Harry glances back at his dad and lets the idea sit for a moment.

"Alright, I'll see if she's willing to meet up, but what do I do if she's not?"

James places his hand on Harry's shoulder, "Then you'll know it's time to move on and we'll go from there."

It sounds sort of terrifying, but the same argument Harry's been coming back to the last two days resurfaces - they aren't children anymore. He isn't a child, and he's not going to start things off with Gin this time around as the same scared and awkward seventeen-year-old specky git he was before. She deserved more then, and she certainly deserves more now.

"Well, at least I don't have to think about what the letter should say when I write it tonight."

"Good on you, mate," James pulls him into a quick hug. "Now, let's get this spell figured out so we can head out."

"Are the two of you still not done?" Sirius comes out of one of the other rooms.

"We're on it, Black," James waves the door open and gives Harry a gentle shove. "Come on, before the boss over there fires us."

The decision to ask Gin to meet up with him is what gets Harry through the workday, but when he finally sits down to write the note, there's a part of him that feels like a panicking seventeen-year-old again.

"Don't be a wanker," Harry kicks himself and forces his pen to write her name on the index card he's chosen to keep himself from getting long-winded.

Gin,

This letter writing, while I can't think of a better penpal, is a bit cumbersome, don't you think? Would you be willing to meet up sometime? I don't want to get in the way of any birthday plans but if you have time, I'd like to see you outside of crashing into you on the pavement.

Harry

He reads the note three times, trying to decide if he should actually respond to her letter or not before deciding he won't; he'd rather talk to her in person about everything in her letter. Before he can talk himself out of this, he ties the note to Hedwig's leg and watches her fly off into the sky, the sun slowly sinking towards the horizon.