A./N. This is written for round 1 of Fire The Canon's March Fanfiction Tournament Competitions, using the prompt "beetle." I'm really not thrilled with how it turned out, but...
This is also dedicated to Ashleigh (Fire The Canon) for her 21st birthday! :D (This isn't my GGE fic for you, just a slightly late birthday fic.) She claims to be the only Romione fan who is actually fond of Lavender, and I suspect she has a soft spot for Ron, so... Happy Birthday, Ash! Have a fantastic Irish birthday party (their accents really are fantastic ;)).
He's been running in circles for months, and he's beginning to think that not every maze has an way to get out. Or if it does, he certainly can't find it. He's sick of Lavender, to be honest. She's so... clingy, and, while it's quite nice to have someone to snog, he thinks he'd rather it be someone he actually likes. But she's solid ground, and even if sometimes he wants to escape her, he knows she's safety.
He's like a beetle, he thinks; able to fly, but too scared to take off. He yearns for the sky, and if he took flight, maybe he could get there. But he's too afraid to try, so he settles into the sealed jar he lives in, and stands on the same soil, day after day.
Never in his life has he seen a beetle fly, he realises. And he's Ron Weasley; he's never the first to do anything. Sixth child, fourth lowest in the class, and always, always second best. But he has to admit, there are perks to being second best. Beetles may not be butterflies, but no one expects them to be beautiful. So he settles down for the night and goes to sleep, trying not to admit how tempting the open sky is above.
Lavender is pretty, yes, he's always known that. She's pretty like flowers in a garden; everyone recognizes her beauty, and it's obvious. People love flowers for that; they're never changing, always lovely, and sometimes, it seems as though that's the only purpose they serve. Sometimes, though, Ron wishes for more. He wants to escape his little world of gardens and fields, and he wants to soar. The sky, he thinks, holds even more beauty than the earth, full of unanswerable questions, and countless lights on a backdrop of ebony.
The sky, unlike the blossoms, is ever-changing; it goes from grey and stormy to blue and clear to cold and black in a matter of minutes; it holds another world. (And really, that just about sums up his sky; laughing one moment, and screaming at him the next, he never knows whether he's getting sunshine or a hurricane with her.)
The sky has now been grey for days, but his flower still isn't wilting, so he's stuck on the ground with her stem wrapped around him, the stars that used to be clear, hidden by tears of thunderstorms. One of his best friends is no longer speaking to him, and he feels more trapped than ever. If he takes off now, he'll be rid of the ground, but who's to say the sky will stop storming?
He's too deep in to stop now.
As the weeks go on, he's hoping more and more that she'll end it between them. But she's holding on tighter and tighter now that she senses he's getting ready to open his wings.
And then finally, she ends it. She's full of misconceptions, but he's too tired to argue otherwise (and really, this is what he's been wanting the entire time), and the sky turns blue once again. And although the next years have their ups and downs, he's off the ground and soaring, and he's not planning on coming back down.