Little Sisters Are Never Right, They're Just Slightly Less Wrong
Ron stood in the bathroom; leaning over the sink with his eyes closed, and rested his forehead against the mirror. The mirror was making soothing shushing noises and he almost didn't hear the door creaking open.
Gentle arms curled around his body and the weight of a head settled upon his back.
"I'm here," Hermione whispered.
Ron sighed, deeply, and mumbled his response.
"I know."
Hermione squeezed him tightly and Ron tried not to let his mind wander. He was trying not to think at all.
"Is everything alright with George?" Hermione asked as she clung to Ron's t shirt, bushy hair tickling the back of his neck.
"No," Ron murmured, eyes still closed.
The mirror's restful sounds grew louder, causing the cool glass to vibrate against his skull, and Ron guessed that the mirror was trying to tell Hermione to stop asking questions.
She did stop asking questions. She didn't, however, stop talking.
"You should lie down in your room if your head hurts."
Ron gripped the basin tightly and held his breath.
"Ron, I really think..."
"Please don't think," Ron huffed, shakily, "don't think, don't think about anything, I know it's not in your nature but switch your brain off for a second."
He was looking at her reflection before him in the mirror and he caught a glimpse of the desperation in his own eyes. Hermione rubbed her hands up and down his arms and pressed her cheek into the smooth freckled shelf of his shoulder blade.
"Whatever it is you can tell me," she whispered, "and if you don't want to tell me, you don't have to, but please don't worry yourself. I can't help but think when I see you looking so stressed."
"Close your eyes," Ron said, doing so himself and hoping she was following suit, "then you won't see...and I won't worry about you seeing."
He turned around in her arms and clung to her. They both sighed. Ron felt an ache in his chest. He could feel Hermione's concern for him flooding out of her. Even if he didn't have his new talent for falling into people's minds he'd still be able to pick up on her worry, she was terrible at hiding her emotions from him.
Something concerned Ron about that.
While he could always read her emotions instinctively he knew that she was constantly in tune with him and saw through him every time he tried to hide something from her. She would know if he was in pain, under stress, lying to her, up to mischief...she was Mad-Eye Moody the way she could look through his protective walls and see into his heart.
'I have seen your heart, and it is mine.'
Ron jumped away from her and shivered on remembering the sickening hissing voice of Voldemort. It was as if he was stood, dripping wet with freezing water in the ice and snow, before the fragment of the manipulative wizard again.
"Ok, you're shaking now, please tell me," Hermione said, rubbing her hands up and down his arms to warm him with the friction.
Ron gulped and looked into her wide, worried eyes. He cupped her face in both hands and whispered to her, unsteadily.
"Take my heart."
"What?" Hermione blinked, hands no longer moving but gripping him around the biceps, so tightly the blood stopped flowing properly.
"I want you to have it," Ron said, voice still strangely faint and desperate, "I want...I trust you with it."
"Take...?" Hermione's brow furrowed deeply and she tried to read the fear in Ron's eyes, "Ron, please, I don't understand."
Ron still held her face, gently, in his large strong hands and lowered his head down towards her slowly.
"Do you think I have a good heart Hermione?" he whispered into her face.
Hermione nodded and lifted herself up onto her tiptoes, lips gradually parting.
"Yes."
"Can you see it?" Ron said, voice cracking ever so slightly.
"I...I can see the goodness in you, yes."
"Can you see into my heart?" Ron said, attempting to brace himself for disappointment.
"It's open for everyone to see Ron, that's one of the things I love ab-" Hermione stopped speaking and bit her bottom lip.
For all their kisses and cuddles, hand holding and going to places as a couple, they'd still not talked about love. He loved her, he knew that and he was pretty sure she knew it too, but saying it seemed like something to side-step. It wasn't them, they didn't gush, in fact it was one of the things that made them compatible.
"It's yours," Ron said, hoarsely, "I'm giving it to you; I want you to have it."
Hermione nodded and her lips brushed up and down against Ron's. Her hot, moist breath caressed his face and warmed him through to the core. His shivers were gone now and he dipped his head and kissed her very softly, plucking at her bottom lip and then grazing the top one with the curve of his own. Hermione sighed into his mouth and her fingers were quickly weaving through his shaggy copper hair.
"I'll treasure it," she said breathily.
Ron pressed his lips against Hermione's and then opened them slightly, coaxing hers apart too.
"Tell me its yours," Ron gasped, desperately.
"It's mine," Hermione said, hand falling from his hair and dragging down his chest to settle, fingers splayed, upon his chest, "I've got it now, it's all mine."
Ron held her close to him and kissed the side of her neck.
"Say it again."
"It's mine."
Ron tilted his head to one side and kissed Hermione's open mouth, opening his eyes and looking right into her as they parted, just a breath away from each other.
"Again," he implored as he closed his eyes once more and kissed her again, tip of his tongue stroking between her soft lips.
"It's mine," Hermione panted into Ron's mouth, her lips were glistening as she pushed him into her with the hand she still had at the back of his head, "all mine," she eased her tongue into Ron's mouth and rubbed it against the side of his before moving back and crushing three more kisses against his mouth, "and I'm never letting it go."
Hermione wasn't worrying about anything anymore. She wasn't thinking. Ron relaxed and his mind was at ease again. She wasn't going to pull him in with her mind, not while she had such a hold on him with her arms, her lips, and her heart.
She'd have questions later. Hermione always had questions, but for now he was happy enough to use the best distraction technique in his armoury.
Ginny took her time changing after her shower. She had been sweaty and filthy after her physical endurance training and wanted nothing more than to go home and snuggle up with Harry on the sofa. The one thing that kept her towel drying her hair rather than using a charm that would only take seconds was Ron.
He had never told her about his possession, and Harry resolutely refused to betray his friend's confidence, but Ginny had known from the first moment she got to really look into her brother's eyes.
The battle of Hogwarts was over, Voldemort was gone and Harry had come back from the dead...and then walked right past her to find Ron and Hermione. She'd lost Fred, she wanted to be with her family and friends, there were so many bodies and so many wounded. It wasn't until the day after Fred's funeral that she sat down with Ron and really looked at him.
He was up unusually early for him, sitting at the kitchen table and gripping his mug of hot tea, and she had pulled out her chair and sat opposite him. They mumbled a good morning to each other and it was a minute or two before they both looked up at each other at the same time, eyes meeting and locking, and Ron's shoulders fell.
"Did he get to you?" Ginny heard herself saying.
Ron's eyes were beginning to well up and he nodded.
"Do you remember what you did?"
Again he nodded.
"That's something eh?" She tried to smile as she spoke but wasn't sure she'd managed to pull it off.
"Not really." Ron said, barely audible.
"Did he hurt you?" Ginny said as she leaned over the table and grabbed him around the wrist, fearfully.
"Nah," he said before drawing in a deep breath and turning his hand over in her grip and holding onto her wrist, much looser than her hold on his, "just showed me all the bad things I think about myself...and what everybody else thinks of me too."
"Nobody thinks bad things about you," Ginny said, cursing Voldemort for playing on her brother's insecurities like that.
"You aren't really the person to be reassuring me on that one Gin," Ron said with a sad smile.
"Oh come off it," Ginny huffed, "brothers and sisters talk like that to each other all the time. Fred and George call you a...George calls you a git as if it's your name but he'd hex the lips off anybody else who put you down."
The mention of George as a lone tormentor weighed heavy on the two of them for a moment.
"He knew all about me," Ron said as he stared down at the table and picked at the tough skin around his thumbnail, "I let him in and he saw everything and...he saw stuff even I didn't let myself see."
"He didn't know you," Ginny said, firmly, "just like he didn't know me, he manipulated us and tricked us with his mind games but he didn't know anything about us."
"You don't know what he said," Ron said, shaking his head, shamefully.
"I know what he said to me when I was eleven," Ginny said, sharply, "Do you think I'm pathetic and whiny and none of you like me because I'm the little princess? Do you think Harry's embarrassed by my affection and wishes I'd go away? Do you think all I'm good for is cooking and cleaning and making babies while all my wonderful brothers pass on the family name and make us respected and admired?"
"No," Ron said, astonished that Ginny still carried those thoughts with her.
"So whatever he said to you is equally ridiculous, tell me what he said and I'll tell you w-"
"No!" Ron said in a fierce panic.
Ginny stopped pushing immediately.
"Ok," Ginny said, withdrawing and patting the back of his hand in a gesture of reassurance, "you don't have to tell me about it if you don't want to."
"'M sorry," Ron sighed, shakily.
"Don't worry, I'll never ask you again," Ginny said with a sad smile, "just promise me you won't believe whatever it was he said to you. He's not in your head any more and that's because you were too strong for him."
Ron gave a her a half smile and then Ginny shook her head and realised that she had her face buried in the damp towel, wet hair hanging down around her face and the scene at the kitchen table merged into the changing room or the Auror department.
She blinked her eyes back into focus and looked at her brother sitting opposite her, rubbing his head and wincing.
"Sorry," he grunted, "I just walked in and...wow! Your thoughts were like Devil's Snare, I didn't have a chance."
"It's ok, I don't mind," Ginny said as she smiled at him, "I know you don't mean to and that was a memory belonging to the both of us so you didn't see anything you had no right to see."
Ron appeared to be incredibly thankful for her understanding. Ginny threw down the towel and tugged at the hem of her long t shirt, to make sure she was covered up, before leaning forward.
"What were you doing in the office with the powers that be for all this time? Are you allowed to tell me?"
"Well, they aren't keen for it to be spread around at work but they didn't say anything about not telling my sister," Ron said with a smile and then a cautious shrug, "if you really want to know."
"Tell me." Ginny nodded.
Ron cleared his throat and leaned forward, elbows on his thighs.
"The want to do some tests to see if I can control the wandless Legilimency and if I can then...well, they were talking about using me for interrogations or something. I'd be a specialist or something."
"Ok," Ginny nodded, "and what if you can't control it? What if the reason you get headaches is because it's damaging you when it happens?"
"They said that they'd look into something to prevent it happening at the same time they were looking into the control. Obviously the Minister and all the higher-ups don't want me reading their minds, they'd like to know how to stop it if needs be."
Ginny didn't like the sound of that.
"So if you read the mind of the Minister for Magic, entirely by accident, and saw something you shouldn't...what would they do to you?"
"They never said," Ron answered, his eyes letting her know that something had been suggested but it wasn't something he was prepared to agree to.
"If they mess around with your head, trying to exploit or control this ability of yours, then I will make heads roll."
Ron smiled at her.
"While you're offering can you do me a ham and cheese roll?"
Ginny laughed and slapped him on the arm, playfully.
"I'm serious!"
"I know," Ron grinned, "but it's so unlike us to have serious conversations that don't involve shouting, I had to do something to put a stop to it."
Ginny rolled her eyes and shook her head.
"So they were ganging up on you to be their mind-reader, as long as you only read the minds they tell you to?"
"No, there was a Healer checking me over and Kingsley was there to negotiate for me. They were talking about a load of stuff I didn't get but Kingsley was on their backs for my rights as a wizard. He said something about exploiting a trainee and they were all mumbling a lot in the corner and glaring at him."
"I like Kingsley!" Ginny beamed.
"Yeah, he's great to have on your side," Ron agreed.
"There's more?" Ginny pressed further.
Ron scratched his head, mussing up his hair at the front, and puffed out his cheeks with a deep exhalation.
"If they can't control it and they can't stop it I'm off the training programme."
Ginny felt his pain immediately.
"And here I am, coasting through just so I can get on the Quidditch team."
"You're hardly coasting Ginny," Ron said as he pointed to her fading bruises.
"I've taken the place of somebody who could have dedicated their life to being an Auror, I want to play Quidditch and I stole somebody's place. I stole somebody's dream and now you might have yours taken away from you too."
"Or I might have been given a gift," Ron said, faint optimism lifting his spirits a little, "this might end up being a really good thing for me."
"It might do. So are we going home?"
"Yeah, get changed and I'll see you there."
He got up to leave and Ginny grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze.
"You always had a gift you know. Please don't think that this is the thing that makes you special," she said with pride.
Ron squeezed her hand back.
"Thanks Gin."
Ginny grinned as she released her hold on him and watched him walking towards the door.
"You know I'm right," she called after him.
"Little sisters are never right," Ron scoffed, turning at the door to smirk back at her, "they're just, on very rare occasions, ever so slightly less wrong!"
She threw one of her trainers at him but he'd already ducked through the door, laughing.
