Author's Note: Okay, I'm not exactly sure what this is. I've been reading some really lovely, really dark stories. Post war. And as I sat on my floor, wrapping Christmas presents this formed. It literally shot out of my fingers onto my screen. I can't decide if it should be T or M. So, I'm making it M just to be safe. I almost deleted it, but...here it is anyway.
...
You never meant to hurt her. Bloody Hell, you love the girl. The little Weasley girl, with her red dancing hair and light brown eyes that shone like a candle in the darkest of nights, calling to you. Merlin, if only she had never looked at you like that.
Not the way she used to look at you when she was very young, like some hero. Like some perfect specimen. The way she looked at you after you so gracefully knocked yourself of that high, high pedestal. It was after she was angry with you, after she rolled those stabbing brown eyes at your ignorance; at your being so damn cavalier.
After that, she looked and you knew she really saw you. Saw your craggy and misshapen, lightning bolt scarred soul. And you were terrified. Scared of that beautiful little thing that skipped down the corridors and made all the boys turn their heads. Her smile alone could make a Slytherin go against his nature.
Suddenly, you were chasing her down. She had turned on her heel, and you followed. You followed close. Close enough to smell the flowers that hung about her. To notice that you weren't the only boy laughing at her clever words.
And in the end of it, you caught her. She might have let you, but your pride will only allow it to be the way you see it. You were a teenage boy for Merlin's sake. And you took everything she would give you. And Ginny, Ginny Weasley made you feel like a ruddy teenage boy. As if you were no savior. Like you were some hormonal bloke that was created for the sole purpose of carrying her books to class, and piss if that wasn't one of the best feelings in the world.
And she would look at you with relief in her young eyes. Relief. Not because you were the Chosen One, or the sodding Boy Who Lived, but because when passing by between the classes of a particularly dull day, you would pull her under your arm, and make her laugh. You would kiss her in front of the nauseating Romilda Vane. Some how, Ginny fucking Weasley made you feel like enough.
And you of course feared, since the day you learned your fate, that you would never be enough.
You know she's angry. You know she's absolutely livid with you. She could kill you with one of those ripping gazes she's fixed you with those few times since the battle. You knew the smiles shared in those fleeting moments before the earth shook and you earned your name once more, that this would come. You can't leave a fire alone, unattended too long. It will either burn out or rage wider and higher than ever intended.
And Ginny was fire. And she did both.
You left her too long. Something in her eyes is now empty and hollow when she looks at you. But her anger and hurt burns bright and apparent, lighting the darkness with an uneasy spark. And damn it if you aren't drawn to her blazing warmth. You'll let her flames engulf you. You will stand there and be burned up by her any day.
So that's why you go find her. Days after all of those lost had been buried and mourned. She hasn't spoken to you since. Merlin, she will barely look at you! But you are always looking at her. Your harrowed green eyes drilling holes into her. Burning and branding your name on her white, white skin from the intensity of your gaze alone.
So, you find her in her small bedroom. You don't knock, because you won't listen if she denies your entrance, and you won't risk her charming the door locked. (Although you, yourself lock it behind you) Because this is your life or death. Your throat has been constricting, and breathing is becoming more and more difficult.
You startle her when you enter. Ginny is up off her little iron wrought bed now in a flash, and you look at her. Her long red hair hanging all around her shoulders. Her black sweater and black jeans warning you to stay away. The broken, sad girl.
But you stand there, blocking her door. Not feeling like the fucking hero everyone keeps telling you, you are. Right now you are someone completely different. The man you became, because no one gave you any other choice. And that man is halting her escape, and you know she won't be seventeen for another three months, so unless she wants to throw herself out the window (which she might), she will have to face you.
But you are a fool if you think she's afraid of you, just because she jumped when you came barging into her room. And tears stream down her lightly freckled cheeks as she stalks the few feet to shove you hard in the chest. And there is malice behind her little fists. There is not a word from her mouth, before her open palm cracks across your deserved cheek. You'll take it. You'll take any little thing. Your airway releases an inch.
She reaches for her wand to send some sort of hex your way, but you are grabbing her wrist and with one hard shake, using those muscles that you never meant to earn, her wand is tossed onto the carpet.
Well you grabbed her, which is probably a mistake because now that you're touching her, you certainly can't stop.
She is pressed against the door, and your body is against hers. She is growling and protesting, and struggling against the grip you have on her.
But she's also pulling.
Gripping your buttoned shirt. Pulling you back. She's bloody pulling you back from this wretched darkness that consumes your waking moments.
So yeah, you kiss her. You take her mouth. Because there was just a fucking war that was fought and won. And damn it, people died. And it was her red hair you saw, and her flowery scent that lingered about you as death so gently ripped you to apart.
Her lips are frustrated and marvelous under yours. Now you're really breathing again. The vise around your heart slackening. Her lips give against yours, chapped and demanding, and Ginny is kissing you back. She is kissing you back and pulling her hands through your hair. Her rage, fire, and goodness seeping through her, and you lap it up.
"Gin..." you murmur, between savage kisses. You breathe it into her soul. And she whimpers. She bloody whimpers beneath your lips. What are you expected to do with that? So you do exactly what you want to. You grab her and haul her higher against the door. Pressing yourself against her. She has no choice but to hook one leg around your slender hip to keep herself stable.
"Say something," you demand as your tongue presses against her racing pulse point. You can feel her shake her head no, as her nails dig through the cotton of your shoulders. A welcome pain. But you have to hear her say something to you. Her silence has been a new knife to your heart every day. And you're not going to lose her.
Your wandering hands that have been furiously trailing up and down her body, move under her shirt. And her breath hitches as your never satisfied mouth moves down to her exposed collarbone. "Say something," you demand once more, nipping at her bone. Leaving evidence. And the red mark looks an awful lot like your name.
She refuses like before, her now swollen lips shut tight. Her supple jaw flexed in concentration. But her hands, her hands tell you otherwise, as they claw and cling to your healing body. Now determined, your mouth returns to her's, and your calloused hand moves down to her knickers; and you demand words again. She does her best to stifle a moan, as her hips buck against your hand. And when your hand skims under the lacy band, her mouth gasps and opens, and you push your tongue past her bared teeth and your fingers farther down that lacy scrap of material.
And you taste blood. You taste her blood in your mouth. The tinge of rust on her saliva. Blood caused by biting her own tongue against the words that were desperately clawing their way from her cold, and broken heart up and out of her long delicate throat to find you. And the blood tastes an awful lot like your name.