Altered Paces

Summary: The Final Battle ended three years ago, and everything changed. Voldemort is gone forever, but Harry paid a price he wasn't sure he was ready to pay. For three years, he was out of the country trying to put his life back together, but now he's ready to return. What he didn't put into consideration was the fact that his past wasn't ready for him.

Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me, of course. Must I even say it?

Chapter 2

Ginny Weasley sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning her back against the legs of her current boyfriend, Ashton Livingston. She was reading away, a muggle book called 'The Great Gatsby', while he sat above her, pretending to read over her shoulder. Really, he was staring at her, watching her eyes zoom across the page and catching the emotion change as she read each line. Ashton could tell you exactly what was going on in the story without picking it up once. He knew Ginny's facial expressions back to front, but anyone would if they spent as much time as he did with her.

She was totally wrapped up in her book that she barely noticed any thing else going on around her. She knew Ashton was watching her, but in a very subconscious way. When she read a book, she read a book, and nothing got in her way. She didn't used to be this way. It wasn't until Harry left that she discovered the escape route hidden in every single book she picked up.

She had never been more in love with anyone in her life than she was with Harry Potter, so when he disappeared, she was devastated. All she could think of was his silent image, dressed in nothing but black on the hill of the cemetery, eyes void of everything. It scared her. It scared her so much to look in his eyes and see nothing but a deep, undying darkness. He looked so like Sirius.

As she reached the last few words of the chapter, the doorbell in the front of her muggle apartment rang and brought her out of her reverie, but only for a moment. She barely had time to say, "Ashton, you wanna get that?" before she was sucked right back in. In fact, he didn't need to waste time pulling his legs carefully from behind her, because she didn't even notice her back hitting the hard leg of the couch.

Ashton flipped the light on in the hallway as he made his way towards the front door. He didn't know who might be at Ginny's front door, but it could be any number of people. He was always so surprised at how many people knew her. If it wasn't her closest friend, Hermione Granger, at the door, it was one of her family members, or even an ex-boyfriend. He was jealous beyond belief. Here he was, a man fresh from America who knew no one, and he was more in love with Ginny than anyone understood, yet she didn't have the time to spend with him. Or at least that's how he saw it.

He looked through the peephole quickly, but he didn't recognize the man standing outside. He slipped the lock off and opened the door slowly, allowing himself to fall against the doorframe. "Yeah?" he asked in a deep, somewhat offended voice of the strange looking man standing outside his door. He looked vaguely familiar, but Ashton didn't think much of it.

- - -

Harry flattened his hair as best he could as he heard footsteps approaching inside the house. It had been much easier than he thought it would be to find where Ginny lived. Even out of school, she was quite the social butterfly. Tom of the Leaky Cauldron could instantly give Harry directions to her flat. Of course he recognized the boy-who-lived right away, but one meaningful glance from Harry told him that he should keep it quite, and he did, of course.

So, the day after the re-building of Godric's Hollow, he set out to re-build a much more important part of his life. Every single day he regretted leaving Ginny without a last word, but it didn't seem to hard at first. He was gone for an entire year, seeing no one but Ron and Hermione. Up until Ron's funeral, he was lost to the general public, and sadly, Ginny was part of that ignorant group, though she did know more that most. Ron's funeral was the first time they had spoken since the fateful night at Bill and Fleur's wedding. While the party raged into the night, Ginny and Harry found solitude in one of the upstairs bedrooms, and they spent a night together neither could easily forgot.

So, here he was, preparing himself for the first real conversation with Ginny Weasley in four years. As the footsteps approached, the lump in his throat grew. Seconds before the door was opened, a rock dropped into his stomach. He came to the horrid realization that he wasn't prepared for this conversation at all. He wasn't ready to confront the only woman he ever loved. He hadn't even though about this! His entire wall came crashing around him. Every plan he thought was so well figured out seemed so naive. The pressure was killing him, but the door still opened...

Relief swept over Harry as a male figure answered the door. He was tall, skinny, and obviously American by his accent. His bleach blonde hair was long and was swept to the side, covering half of one of his deep blue eyes. To Harry, he looked like a silly boy, though his voice and attitude gave away that he couldn't be more than a year younger than Harry himself. He was still on the verge of collapsing, but excuses were rapidly being formed in his mind.

Obviously he had the wrong house. Ginny didn't live here after all. She probably lived miles away and Harry could go sit in his empty house and contemplate what in the world he was to do for as many weeks as he wished. He let out a deep breath before he realized that he had been standing in silence for quite some time, and immediately he began talking.

"Oh, well, I thought someone lived here who I really need to see, but I guess I have the wrong address. Sorry to bother you," he said. He felt so strong up until now. He felt older, almost superior to his former self, but when the thought of Ginny Weasley came to mind, he felt like the child he was the last time he spoke with her. His defenses fell, and he was nothing more than a boy who fell in love with his best friend's sister.

He was halfway turned around when Ashton spoke up. "Wait, I don't own this place. Are you looking for Ginny?" He was obviously struggling against his better judgment when he told Harry this, and he instantly recognized it. It was causing Ashton a great pain to openly allow another man to talk to his girl.

Harry nodded solemnly, and though his heart was racing and his mind was fighting to make his feet run away, his heart won and he walked up to the door and stepped inside. He knew he had to talk to Ginny Weasley today, and nothing was going to stop him.

Ginny was so engrossed in her book that she almost didn't come out front to meet her visitor, but something made her put her book down and walk to the front door. Her mind was still wandering the pages of Gatsby's life, but all thoughts of her novel were swept from her mind as she turned the corner and spotted the man she thought she would never see against standing in her doorway. She stood in shock for a moment, staring at Harry Potter, and then her knees collapsed and she nearly fell to the floor. Little did she know that Harry was doing the same thing, just not physically.