Author's Note: I admit it. I love Ron/Ginny. Commit me.
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My entire life I've been just another.
Just another Weasley. Just another Gryffindor.
Just another schoolgirl, with a crush on Harry Potter.
I blush and smile and swoon like them. I giggle. But I'm not like them. They don't understand it; no one does.
The other ones – the other girls 'like me' – sleep at night in restful dreams of dark-haired princes in shining armour coming to rescue them. It's ironic, really – their prince really did rescue me once, and yet all of my dreams of dark-haired princes involve blood, pain and lies. Nightmares, except in every one I'm the person I most fear. It's hard to feel at ease in your own skin after that.
Harry saved me from death. He couldn't save me from Tom – he was too late for that. And never would he be able to save me from myself.
I learned from Tom. I know now not to fall in love with a fantasy. I know not every dark-haired prince is like my Tom was; Harry's not. But lofty loves like princes will never understand; they won't know what it feels like to be worthless, to be unclean. They won't ever know what it's like to be your own nightmare.
They won't be able to save me.
After Tom, I was in such desperate need of saving. No one understood it – no one, except maybe for you. They all thought the worst was over; they realized I was distraught, but they thought it would pass. They thought that I would cope and smile and be okay – be innocent, naïve little Ginny again. I wish they had been right.
They were wrong. The worst had just begun. How could I be all right, now that he was gone – now that I knew what I had done?
How could they expect me to go back to being the sweet Ginny they loved when that very girl was the one who got the blood on my hands?
You knew. You've always known me better than the rest of them – you can always see. You held me, and you let me cry – you gave me your arms to be safe in, gave me your love to feel needed, gave me your filth to feel clean. You saved me, like no prince ever has or ever will. You made me new again – different, and still me. You let me be Ginny. And you loved her.
You're the reason I know I'm not like them. I've given up on fantasies like princes; I giggle and blush like the rest, but only for habit. I wouldn't dare to try to live a dream like that, again. Dreams, I've learned, are quick to turn to nightmares.
You've made me realize that all I want is your reality – someone who will love me through my despair, through my hatred, through my worthlessness. I don't need someone to live up to, someone to make me live an ideal; I just want someone who knows me, at my best and worst. And loves me anyway. Loves me always, as you do.
Sometimes I look at you, and I feel hopeless. I feel hopeless, because I want someone like you – but no one will ever be like you, not for me. They see you as just another, too – but you're not just another to me. You're just so. You're everything I'd want, and I can't have you.
Sometimes I look at you, and I'm not safe in my own skin anymore. I can't want you – I'm not supposed to. It makes me dirty, it makes me worthless, it makes me wicked to want you. I can't help myself, though – I still do. I laugh at the irony, because the only one who can save me from myself is you, and I could never tell you why I hate myself so. Your love would only make it worse; it would remind me of what I'm supposed to be – caring, and innocent.
And if you wanted me, too – I can't help but wonder, sometimes, if you'd want me, too…if you love me in my darkest hours because I give myself to you – because I love you and I trust you blindly to mend my broken pieces. Is it enough for you, that I love you? Is that enough for you to want me? I hate myself for thinking that way, for thinking that I want you to want me – that I want to know how I can make you want me.
If you wanted me, though…if you wanted me, too, you would make me whole again. You would roll in the mud with me, and make me clean. Sometimes I think I need you to want me, because this feeling I have for you…it's not going away. Sometimes I think it never will. I stall and I giggle for fantasies I don't want; I wait and watch for someone who can understand me like you do.
But I know they'll never come along, because you're not just another. You're just so. And the way you see me, you understand me…that's what makes you that way; that makes you right to me. Not perfect, like lofty dark-haired princes that steal away on dancing stallions, leaving you with your tears. Just right.
It feels right to want you, when you should be the one most wrong.
I can't help to be like them, sometimes – to blush and smile and swoon like they do. So sometimes, I fall into pleasant dreams, romantic not so tales of the times my red-haired knight in hand-me-down robes swore, broke, and bled like a prince never would. Loving me all the while; wanting me all the time.
Dreams, I've learned, are quick to turn to nightmares.