Author's Note: Just a little drabble I had been tossing around in my head as I thought of the ending of my last fic, Come Back and Haunt Me. This story takes place in that universe (approximately 3 years later). I wrote this chapter between classes when I could no longer contain it. The story will be about 5 or 6 chapters of flashbacks and forwards detailing important events of the brief period when Harry and Ginny separated.

...

"Vindicated, I am selfish. I am wrong.

I am right. I swear I'm right. I swear I knew it all along.

And I am flawed, but I am cleaning up so well.

I am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself."

- Vindicated, Dashboard Confessional

Harry Potter stood in line at the deli, on a cold November morning. With coffee and pastry in hand, he waited to pay for his sorry breakfast. This was the first time he'd eaten breakfast in a few weeks now. But he stopped this morning because he thought 'he should'.

The days had been beginning to run together. Get up, work out, go to work, work late. Go back to Ron and Hermione's, eat the leftovers of whatever they had cooked for supper. Work some more from the spare bedroom he had been crashing in for the last five weeks, and then when he couldn't stand be conscious anymore he would fall asleep. Usually at the table he had transfigured into a work desk. Then the cycle would start again.

If anyone had told Harry that this would be his life at the ripe age of twenty five years old, that he would be separated from his wife, and seeing his six month old son only every few days, he wouldn't have believed it.

As the line progressed forward, he couldn't help but scan the tabloids and trashy magazines near the cash register. He knew he shouldn't. It was a strange sort of torture that he had come to self inflict as of late. But he couldn't stop himself. He was dying to see her face.

And once again the journalists and photographers that he used to curse came through for him. There she was. Ginny Potter, his beautiful twenty four year old wife holding his finest accomplishment, James Sirius, on the front of Witch Weekly. Harry didn't even try to be subtle this time. Holding the pastry in his teeth, he used his now free hand to grab the front copy.

Through his signature glasses he looked intently at his family who were quickly slipping through his fingers. Godric, if he was honest with himself they'd been slowly slipping for a while now. His redheaded wife was as beautiful as the day he realized he loved her. Her hair long still, but shorter than she used to wear it before the baby came. She'd been wearing it wavy lately, he'd noticed.

In this particular photograph Ginny was clad in her trenchcoat, with a scarf billowing around her neck. And on her hip was their son. James. His arms ached to hold his son. Little James' head of messy black hair made it clear that he was a Potter through and through. A point of pride for Harry. They must have been out running errands around Hogsmeade.

"Our Favorite Harpy Ginny Potter out with New Baby! - Where's Harry? Details inside!"

"Will you be buying the magazine too, sir?" came the deli clerk's voice. Shaking himself back to reality, Harry set his coffee, pastry (which now had considerable teeth marks), and magazine onto the counter.

"Yeah, I'll take it." Harry responded, his voice distant and raspy from first use. Pulling a few sickles out of his trouser pocket to pay, he could tell it was already going to be long day.

"Ginny Potter was such a great Quidditch player," the clerk added offhandedly, as he rang up the magazine.

"Still is," Harry noted a bit sharply, disliking the past tense of the clerks comment. The past tense of everything these days had been driving him mental.

"Yeah, I remember watching her when The Harpies won the Quidditch World Cup last year. Merlin, she's brilliant, and real fit too." This caused Harry's eyes to narrow. "Sad day for all of us Harpy fans when we found out she had to sit out this season. Lucky her kid's so cute. Guess that makes it all worth it?" The clerk finished with a chuckle, giving Harry the total.

Harry quickly paid, without giving another look to the store clerk. Thankful the young man hadn't recognized him, The Chosen One. The bloody Savior of the Wizarding World at age seventeen. If only there wasn't a frustrating amount of celebrity that came with defeating Voldemort. He'd never asked for it. And his wife being a world famous Quidditch player didn't help. The fact that Harry Potter married a Weasley, two of the most well known last names in the wizarding world had thrust He and Ginny into the spotlight, deemed the 'it couple'.

These days the press was only good for one thing: Harry to brood over his own stupidity; his own cowardice. In the weeks since Harry had stopped staying at Grimmauld Place, he'd only seen Ginny a handful of times. She'd kept herself away from him, allowing Harry to see his son at Andromeda's, or dropping him off with Hermione before Harry arrived home from work.

Those few times they had run into each other had been strained and tense. Once at the Burrow, before anyone knew they were having issues, once or twice dropping off and picking up James and Teddy, and a few charity balls that they both felt obligated to attend.

Harry probably could have figured out a routine; a new normal. Let Ginny have her space. Endure this distance. If only he wasn't having the best sex of his life with his wife. Once in the coat closet of the charity ball and twice against the wall of Ron and Hermione's front hall. (They weren't home mind you.) Clothes on, knickers aside, furious-desperate kisses, white knuckled hands, stifled moans, whispered pleas. And then always the same; the straightening of the clothes, petty argumentative banter, business to be discussed. "Did you want James on Wednesday or Thursday?" or "Andromeda needs you to pick up Teddy after school."

Oh, Ginny Potter pulsed through his veins alright. If she wasn't so damn beautiful. If seeing her hold his precious son wasn't the biggest turn on of his life. Pubescent hormones be damned, compared to the desire he felt when his wife acted like a mother. Not to mention her breasts were fantastic.

Of course these realizations came too little too late. Now he was banished. Exiled. Having taken for granted his beautiful life. Left to ogle his wife off the glossy pages that mocked him.

"- Where's Harry? Details inside!"

...

Author's Note: Just the start! Please leave your comments.