Author's Note: So I finally gave into temptation, and decided to do it – write the lead-in to "Cold Embrace", and explain the unspoken bond between Ron and Ginny in that story. And I must say, I love this pairing. I really, really do. Because I have fun writing it, but I still touch on important subjects and put a lot of effort into my writing. There's something magical about it, really…
Anyway, to those who haven't read "Cold Embrace" – you don't have to in order to understand this story; in fact, reading this story first and then reading "Cold Embrace" might be better that the alternative. Of course, you don't have to read "Cold Embrace" at all, really…but please do. And, no matter what you have to say – if you read this, review! Because I'm used to flames by now, anyway, due to my penchant for incest and slash themes…
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He slides into bed next to me, and wraps his arm around my side, giving me a reassuring smile. I snuggle in close to him, taking solace in his warmth as if I were a needy child. The way he's holding me now is like it was – we used to lie together like this when we were children. And even though he's only twelve and I'm just eleven – which is young, too young really, for all we've been through – I know we're not children, because children are allowed to do different things. Children are allowed to stay in the same room as their brothers, to sleep next to them. So I know when he holds me, he doesn't hold me like I'm an eleven-year-old, but like I'm the child Ginny I used to be, the Ginny who needed him to chase away my fears.
I still need him to chase away my fears, but I don't feel like a child when he holds me anymore. I feel like a woman, a woman lying next to a man. And something about that is so very wrong, wrong like loving Tom, wrong like wanting to be a woman for him…but then I look at Ron, and it's okay. It's okay, because Ron makes everything okay; as long as he loves me, I feel like I can be anything. It was never that way with Tom, simply because Tom would make me something that Ron wouldn't love anymore. I couldn't be that. I thought I loved Tom to the ends of the earth but…Ron is the beginning and end of my earth and I would never hurt him.
I didn't want to hurt anyone, in the first place, but when you love someone, it's so hard to say no. It's so hard to – even when they don't ask, you want to make them happy. You want to do all you can to make life better for them, to make your lives better together. So maybe it didn't seem so bad, to let out the basilisk, to have a few people be Petrified. I never thought they might die, it never occurred to me that Tom would want something like that…because Tom was so sweet, and so kind, and so gentle, and maybe his opinions were a bit different than my family's, but he was a good person…because he loved me.
I thought that anyone with love in their heart had to be good. Now I don't know what good is anymore. I loved Tom, but am I a good person? I could've had people killed, people like Harry. People like Hermione. People I would never want to hurt, but somehow they don't seem so important when you love someone…if they're in the way…
Tom thought that just because I loved him so very much – so very much more than Harry – everything was out of the way. He'd talked me out of telling my family about him in the first place, and he knew how they teased me, and he didn't understand – couldn't – how much I love Ron.
He didn't understand that when he was telling me to hurt Harry, when he was dehumanizing Harry, my hesitation was not out of love for the Boy-Who-Lived. He thought he'd triumphed when he'd beat out the green-eyed seeker for my affections.
But I couldn't hurt Harry; I could never hurt Harry, no matter how much I wanted to for Tom, no matter how much Tom made me loathe him – because of Ron. Because I would hurt Ron.
The fact that Tom would ask me to hurt Ron was too much, and it hurt me, but I tried to make him go away. I loved Tom, I loved Tom so deeply; but not even for Tom could I forsake Ron. Tom didn't know. Tom didn't know about the secret smiles, the hushed conspiracies, and the gentle teasing of siblings. Tom didn't know about the grandiose schemes and the fierce protectiveness of Weasleys.
Tom didn't know about the warm embraces that were Ron and I.
Tom came back to me, and he was angry, so angry…and I couldn't explain. I couldn't. So instead, I pretended it was Harry, it was Harry all along I was scared for, and Tom coaxed me into my repentance – letting out the basilisk again to find prey. Now I knew it could kill – I knew so well, from how he'd spoken of Harry that it could kill – but I was so deep inside of Tom I couldn't escape. I could only obey, and love him blindly, so blindly, even though I felt now that it was wrong.
Before I had thought it was wrong because Tom was just a memory, and he was older than I was – even the memory of him was too much older than I was – my parents wouldn't approve even if he were real. Tom was different than I was, a Slytherin, half-Muggle even…but all those things didn't matter in the end, they'd never mattered, because I'd loved him through it all despite these things. No, it was wrong for me to love Tom, in the end, because loving Tom meant I would hurt Ron.
When I was down in that chamber – I realized something. Tom only loved me as far as he could use me. When he had Petrified Hermione, and I saw how sad and angry Ron was, I couldn't live with myself. I rebelled against Tom. I couldn't let him use me any longer, because I knew then, I knew that whatever he did from then on, it would hurt Ron. Because Ron wanted Hermione safe; Ron wanted the monster gone. And the monster, all along, was Tom, was me…I had betrayed my brother so, in loving Tom.
Tom couldn't take it. When I told him to stop, he wouldn't. I begged him to stop, believe me…I begged, if he loved me, to stop it, or we could never be together. But he didn't love me then, oh no. He'd only loved me when I'd served his purpose; he'd only needed me then. Now it ended, as simple as that. He said it was because I didn't love him anymore, that I loved my precious Potter so much more…that I would sacrifice Tom's life for his, because without the basilisk, Potter would destroy him. I wouldn't have let that happen – if Tom had really loved me. Now I saw that he didn't understand love, not at all.
I didn't understand it that much better, because I realized in the end that my love of Tom had enabled him to use me. To control me and to take me – down into that chamber, and away from my life.
After that, all I could feel was regret. The hurt of Tom not loving me was a faint memory; the hurt of my life draining away was far from my mind. Instead, I regretted that I had betrayed my brother. Because I had loved Tom, I had hurt him; I had risked Hermione's life, and I would risk his, because I knew, I knew with all of my heart that Ron would come for me. Ron would always come for me.
He did; he had. Harry was the one to save me, and at first, I was so relieved that Tom was gone, that the danger was gone, that it didn't even register that Ron hadn't been the one to rescue me. I remember babbling, sobbing of a million things that didn't matter, and Harry led me along the tunnel. I hurt so badly, but it meant I was alive, not in the sweet, painless deceit Tom had given me in substitute for living – and there he was.
Ron had come for me.
"Ginny!" he called. My name.
It had never sounded so sweet.
Yet, I could barely let him touch me, not after what I'd done. He tried to hold me, but I couldn't let myself into his arms. I didn't deserve their comfort. I had brought this on – all my fault – and I should've had to make it go away. But I've never been that strong; Ron has always saved me. Always.
For hours and days after his hand tingled in mine – I felt as if the guilt of my betrayal was burning me – until finally, one day in the Hospital Wing, I burst into tears. I couldn't help but tell him everything.
Ron is such a good listener, like Tom – but he's not like Tom, because he's listening because he cares for me, not because he wants to make it seem that way, not because he wants to use my words against me. And unlike Tom, who only loved me when I would stand beside him, Ron loved me still, though I told him of my betrayal and my guilt and all the things I'd been willing to do to hurt him.
He loved me still – he held me, and in his unique Ron way, he made everything okay. He made everything okay, because he loves me – unconditionally. His love is real, not the manipulation of a Dark Lord – it's the pure, true love of a brother to a sister.
Still, I wonder why I feel like a woman with Ron lying next to me. I've only ever felt that way with Tom; probably because he made me make the kind of decisions a child could never make. With Ron…I should feel like a child again, a child being sheltered from the storm; a child basking in the sunshine, the kind of light that sparkles in Ron's eyes. Instead, I feel older. Like Ron's love makes me more than I am, somehow. But that's not the beauty of what he feels for me, because Ron loves me for who I am; he doesn't want me to be anything more, like Tom would, or even Harry. I can tell Harry knows about the crush I had on him, but he's not acting on it; he cares about me, loves me even, but he needs something more from me, something that I don't understand.
Ron doesn't want anything more than what I am; but he makes me something more, just by loving me. And I wonder if that's a good thing.