The First Time
He had been lying to himself. He told himself, it was in the past, it was over. But it could never be over. No, no matter how much time had gone by it would still haunt his nightmares. It was branded into his memories.
He was a Gryffindor, or so the Sorting Hat had told him. Yet he knew deep down that he was guilty of cowardice. It took a long time for him to be ready to go back. Back to the place he only knew about from Harry's screams in the night.
The odd rasping noise that came from his throat startled Moaning Myrtle, but Ron carried on. If he stopped he wouldn't be able to go on. He swung his leg over the broom he had taken from the storage shed. He didn't need Fawkes there to carry him up this time.
The slimy tunnel hadn't changed since they had been down here last, but at least the descent was gentler. His mind shut down, it didn't want to process what he was seeing, but he forced himself to go on. He needed to see.
The dimly lit passages hid the true size of the passage from sight. He clambered over the rocks caused by his old wand. The gap that once had been large enough for both Harry and Ginny to get through seemed tiny for his much larger frame. He pressed on.
The second door, the one he hadn't reached before. He hadn't got this far last time. Dozens of beady eyes stared at him, as if they were alive. It wasn't hard to work out what was needed. And so, valiantly, he moved onwards.
On the other side of the circular door was a very long chamber. He scrambled through the opening. The towering pillars of carved stone seemed to stare at him as they cast shadows on the floor through the green gloom of the chamber.
He hesitated. He knew the basilisk was long gone, but there was that small part of him that couldn't accept that the creature wouldn't sneak up on him. But he was a Weasley, he hadn't come this far to back out.
It was the smell that hit him first. It wasn't surprising really. After all, a giant snake that's been dead two years isn't likely to smell great. The half rotten flesh was still there at the other end of the Chamber, still so snake like.
"Ginny! Ginny! Don't be dead! Please don't be dead! Ginny, please wake up."
Ron knew the screams. Harry would sometimes start screaming about the Chamber in his sleep. It wasn't hard to imagine his little sister in front of him, lying motionlessly pale, with her red hair fanned out on the floor.
There in front of the bust of Salazar Slytherin and the basilisk corpse was a blood stain. Did it belong to his baby sister, or was it his best friend who had caused the red to stay there for all eternity? A human shouldn't bleed that much.
The puddle of ink that Harry had told them came from the diary. Even after two years it still was there, not evaporated to leave just a stain as the blood had. The ink that his sister had used to pour her heart into the very thing that had possessed her.
Ron never blamed Ginny. It was never her fault. He blamed Lucius Malfoy for handing her the diary, he blamed Tom Riddle for making the diary, but he could never blame Ginny.
It hadn't failed to escape his notice that whenever his best mate seemed to face You-Know-Who he was never there. Maybe that's why he came here. He wanted to see for himself what his mate had seen. To see the place he only knew from screams in the night.
And what he saw scared him more than you could imagine. Reality swam with the past as he stood in the place where, if not for Harry, You-Know-Who would have taken Ginny's life for his own. Where, if not for Fawkes, Harry would have died saving Ginny.
Ronald Weasley was never a coward. But for the first time in his life he turned and ran.