DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

AUTHOR'S NOTE I am having some problems with my computer, when I'm online it keeps restarting the computer. SO, I don't know when I'll be able to update again. I'm going to call about having my computer fixed, but I don't know how long that will take. Sorry for the inconvenience

Harry jerked backwards and his hand flew to the side of his face in shock. He had expected Ginny to be upset, yes, but he had never anticipated her slapping him. Never in any of the time they were together had Ginny resorted to physical violence, it just wasn't in her nature.

"You complete and utter bastard!" Ginny shrieked as she took another swing at him. "Where the HELL have you been? Just disappearing like that . . .sneaking away in the night . . .like a bloody COWARD!"

As Ginny continued to assault him, Harry sat there dumbfounded. He knew he should try to defend himself, to protect his body from the blows, but he couldn't move. Somehow he felt as if he owed this to her, after all that he had done, she deserved the chance to take out her frustration on him.

After several minutes of hitting him, Ginny finally seemed to tire and flopped back against the back of the couch. When he finally felt that it was safe, Harry opened his mouth to speak.

"Ginny . . ." He began tentatively. She still looked plenty upset and he didn't want to spark a fresh bout of physical attack.

"Don't . . . whatever you're going to say, just don't. I don't want to hear pathetic excuses or half-assed apologies. There is nothing you can say, NOTHING, that can make up for the past six years, Harry."

"I know, Ginny. I know it doesn't mean anything to you, but I AM sorry, please believe me."

"Believe you? How can I believe anything you say? Do you know what it was like for me to wake up one morning and you were just GONE? You didn't leave a note, no clue as to where you were going. I thought you had been taken, that you were in trouble."

"I know, I know. I never should have done it that way. Ginny please, just talk to me, hear me out. I'd like for us to be friends again, if that's possible. After we've talked if you never want to speak to me again, I'll understand and I'll stay out of your life. Just give me a change first though, okay?"

Ginny looked up at him silently and studied his face, stared in to his eyes. He didn't know what she was looking for, but he hoped she found it there. Too much of the past six years of his life had been spent thinking about this woman, and he didn't want to lose her again with out even a chance. Finally her gaze drifted back down to her hands and she nodded slowly. A smile slowly slid across Harry's face and he moved to sit next to her on the couch.

"Harry," Mrs. Weasley spoke softly, but in the silent room it startled the other occupants anyway. "You two stay in here and talk. Ron, Hermione, and I will take care of . . .other things."

Harry nodded his appriciation to Mrs. Weasley, feeling a bit ashamed of himself. In the past few moments, he had all but forgotten about his children. Shaking off his feelings of guilt, he turned back to Ginny's expectant face, and tried to decide where to start.

"Say what you need to, Harry," Ginny urged him softly. "I can't promise I'll forgive you, though."

"I wouldn't blame you if you didn't. I never meant to hurt you, I honestly didn't. It never occurred to me how much it would affect you. I guess one thing I never learned was to think before I acted. When I left, I had convinced myself that I was doing what was best for you."

"What was best for me? How could you EVER have thought that leaving me was would be best for me?"

"Because, Ginny, I was everything that was wrong for you. You had it all planned out in your mind, the kind of life we would have, the kind of husband I would be. It just wasn't me, Ginny. I didn't want to be anyone's husband, not then at least. If I had stayed, if we had gotten married, it would have been the biggest mistake either of us ever made. We would have been miserable, YOU would have been miserable. I didn't want to do that to us."

"But we could have worked past it, Harry. We could have gotten through all of that together. I would have listened, we could have postponed the wedding until you were ready. Why didn't you just SAY something?"

"I tried too. I tried more times that I can remember. You just seemed to not want to hear me. You were so caught up in wedding plans, and that was all you thought of, you refused to listen to anything else."

"Don't you dare, Harry Potter! Don't you even try to turn around and blame this on me." Ginny hissed at him.

"I'm not trying to. I'm just trying to make you understand why I did it."

"But I don't understand! Harry I love -I loved you. I would have done anything to make it work. You didn't give me that chance, though. You just took off, and left me to think the worst."

"I know it was wrong of me, but I was so scared. I was only 17, I didn't know how to deal with everything."

"Okay, you were young and stupid. But why didn't you come back? Six years was a long time to stay gone, Harry. Why didn't you ever come back?"

Harry took a deep breath and tried to formulate his response. This was the part of the conversation that he knew had been coming, but that he had been dreading.

"Ginny, there was a lot going on in my life. I wasn't the same person as when I left, I'm still not the same person and never will be. There have been to many changes in my life."

"That's still no reason for you not to come back, Harry. What ever it was, we could have worked through it, just to know that you were alive."

"I couldn't come back, though, I was ashamed."

"Ashamed of what, Harry?"

"Of what I had become, of things I had done. There were things about me that I never wanted anybody to find out about."

"Like what? There is nothing so bad that you couldn't have come home." Ginny insisted. She just couldn't understand why Harry had chosen to stay away for so long. Didn't he know that she could have forgiven him anything?

"When I left, I did a lot of things out of character for me. I started drinking, a lot. I'd go out to the bars and find different women, then take them back to my apartment with me. Every other night I was taking a girl home with me, a different one. At the lowest point, sometimes I'd have more than one in a single night. I'd finish with one and then go find another."

Ginny stared at him wide-eyed and horrified before shifting her gaze down to where her hands were resting in her lap. That simple response had hurt her more than she had hurt when he left her. The two of them had never had any kind of sexual relationship, but yet he had gone whoring around after he left her. Apparently there was something wrong with her, that he found less than desirable.

"Oh," Ginny whispered softly, unsure of how to respond to his confession. "Are . . .are you still . . . .?"

"No. I haven't been that way in five years. I had some . . .things happen, that forced me to change, and to grow up."

"Things?"

"When I was with the girls, I wasn't always . . .careful. I was usually drunk and, more often than not, I never used any kind of protection."

"Oh, Harry. You didn't . . . .you didn't get sick or anything, did you?" Mad as she was at him, there was still a tremor of fear in her voice. No matter what she thought of him, she didn't want anything bad to happen to him, she never had.

"No, nothing like that. But . . . Ginny . . . .I'm a father. I have two little girls."