Authors Note: This is a very disturbing story involving incest and unrequited love. If this sort of thing bothers you, you should click on your back button now. It is rated R, and if I could rate it higher, I would. You have been warned.
Harry Potter is the property of J.K Rowling.
"Like Fire It Burns"
Ron lay with eyes unseeing on his bed, legs crossed, arms folded behind him. Downstairs, he could hear the sounds of his family having dinner, and wished he could join them, but he had had very little interest in food since he had found out. About THEM. THEM who had been sneaking behind his back for six bloody months,THEM who he had caught snogging in the common room just before end of school year.
They had broke apart, flushed and scared looking. Ron had absently noted that Hermione looked very beautiful that way, cheeks crimson and hair astray. It was funny that he had always thought that he would be the one to discover her secrets, to boldy go where no one had gone before, he'd always that they would be each others first.
But he hadn't been the first. It had been Harry, who had looked at him shamefaced and pleading with him not to mind.
"But why didn't you tell me?" he had asked them, "why did you leave it for me to find out this way?"
It was Hermione who had answered, biting her lip as she had done so. "We just didn't know how you would take it, and you've been so busy with Quidditch we didn't want to bother you."
You have bothered me, he had wanted to scream. He had wanted to grab hold of Harry's neck and squeeze until his face turned blue and he had no breath. He'd wanted to rip Hermione's robes from her body and fuck her over and over and over again, as he'd always wanted to, but somehow never got around to doing. Now it was too late.
He had forced a smile on his face. It felt fake and plastic to him, but they had accepted it with relief. "We're really sorry, Ron" Harry had said erneastly. "We never meant to do this behind your back. Things just got out of hand."
Ron had nodded, and left. He had wanted to smash Harry's face in. That night in bed he had wept, soundlessly and the tears had stung. In his head he kept reliving the moment he had caught them, Harry had been running his hand along her stomach as he ravished her neck. Hermione had had her head back, eyes closed, caught in the moment. He wondered how far they had gone. Had Harry tasted the flesh that he,Ron, had only dreamed of? Had any hands parted those slender white thighs?
To his horror he had grown hard beneath his pajamas. His hand crept downwards as his cheeks burned. A thousand images played themselves in his mind as he jerked himself to a furious climax which left him feeling incredibly drained. Tears still coursing freely down his face, he had fallen into a fitful sleep.
It hadn't been the same for them after that. They still walked from class to class with each other, but something was missing. Harry and Hermione were too wrapped up in each other to notice, but Ron knew. He withdrew from them further, only speaking when a response was expected, only eating when the situation arose. He lost a lot of weight but nobody cared.
The school year had ended somehow, although Ron remembered very little. He went home to the Burrow, where he sat in his room day after day despite repeated entreaties from his family to come out. Harry and Hermione had sent owls but he hadn't read them. Finally they had stopped coming.
He noticed he had become hard again, but refused to touch himself. Every time he did it, he felt another small part of him die, another chip in the stone that was his sanity gone. He was losing himself, and he was afraid. He was also afraid of the burning hatred and anger that always lay just below the surface. He knew if he gave in to it, he would never be Ron again.
There was a soft knock at his door then but Ron ignored it.
"Ron," came Ginny's voice. "Mum sent me with a tray. She really wants you to eat something."
"Go away," Ron muttered. "I'm not hungry."
"Ron, let me in," Ginny pleaded. "I really want to talk to you."
Ron sighed and released the door charm with an impatient flick of his wand. "It's open," he said grudgingly. "Come in."
The door opened and Ginny was there, pale in the waning light, carrying a tray no doubt loaded with food. He lay and waited for the inevitable lecture on how he should take better care of himself, how no one liked to see him this way, and every other argument that had been brought against him to try to get him out of bed.
Ginny did none of these things. She set the tray down gently on the dresser beside her and shut the door softly. She then came and sat by him on the bed. "It's not just you, you know," she said quietly.
Ron blinked. "What do you mean?" he asked warily.
"I mean you're not the only one hurting about all this. Do you think that I enjoy having to watch them snog all the time, in front of me because they don't for one second realise I mind? At least they excersise some restraint about you, with me I not only have to watch it, Hermione tells me all about it, and I have to smile and pretend I'm happy for her when really I want to rip her hair out and hit her!" Angry tears had filled her brown eyes as he stared at her.
"I thought you said you were over Harry," Ron sadi questioningly.
"It was just something I said...I was sick of being made fun of about it, I knew Harry would never be interested in me while he still though of me as a child with a crush. And now its too late, it was all for nothing, he's gone to her, and who am I to compare?"
Her hair was very red against her face. Ron did not answer right away, so entranced he was by the glowing red of her hair, it was darker than his, and glowed around her face like a halo.
"Hermione's really not all she's cracked up to be, you know,"he said while still looking at her hair. He wished his hair were that red.
"What do you mean? I thought you loved Hermione," said Ginny, somewhat accusingly, he thought.
"I did,and do," he replied, "but she can be a right pain. She's so interested in books and things that she wouldn't know how to be spontaneous if it killed her. She probably reads a book about how to...." and hear his voice trailed off.
Ginny flushed, then giggled. "She does! She showed it to me! 1001 inventive ways to please your wizard or some crap like that. And she knows every contraceptive spell by heart."
Contraceptive spells....then they were..."They're fucking then...." Ron said dully. He felt that tiny piece of hope that he had carried with him shatter.
Ginny looked at him pityingly. "Of course they're fucking, Ron. Everyone's fucking these days."
"Except me," Ron said, "never me." His mind felt very far away, and his tongue felt leaden in his mouth. He could feel his mind floating away and he wanted nothing more than to let it, but just then Ginny brought it crashing back to the earth."
"Want to try it?"