-so this is chapter four. i hope it makes some sense. tell me what you think?
Chapter 4: not yet lost
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(All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
Four fleet does at a gold valley
the famished arrow sang before.
Bow at belt went my love riding
riding the mountain down
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
the sheer peaks ran before.
Paler be they than daunting death
the sleek slim deer
the tall tense deer.
Four tall stags at a green mountain
the lucky hunter sang before.
All in green went my love riding
on a great horse of gold
into the silver dawn.
four lean hounds crouched low and smiling
my heart fell dead before.
-e.e. cummings )
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(still dreaming)
Ginny stands in the sunlight for a while, feeling as though she should be crying, although she can't remember the reason. She feels obscurely guilty, and the watercolour sky is dripping sunset colours into the river, like a painting Hermione did once.
"Queen of Hearts."
She turns quickly, trying not to hope. This has happened so many times; on a subway platform or across a crowded room, she'll catch a tall figure with red hair, just beyond her peripheral vision, or she'll hear a voice she used to know. Sometimes now she doesn't let herself look, but mostly she can't help it- the catching breath in her throat and the welling despair- because she knows she's wrong, but oh, if she were right. So she turns around, and this time it is different. Ron is standing under the weeping willow, eyes like sky and a face she knows better than her own. He looks at her, grinning crookedly, and raises his arms.
"Wings, Ginny?" he says, but she's shaking so violently she can't answer him, or even move. Then Ron nearly crushes her, pulling her into a hug and stroking her back in slow circles, until she's finished crying. She would like to tell him how much she misses him, how miserable she has been and how wrong everything is now, but she has a feeling he already knows it well enough. So instead, when he steps back to study her face, she tries a shaky smile.
"God, you're pretty now. Tall, too," he murmurs. Then, grinning again, "But really, Gin, wings?" He raises his arms again, slowly, and this time she sees that he does indeed have wings. They are wide as those of a heron or a crane, the colour of sunset. When he moves his arms, the wings follow. Ginny shakes her head, although the image is oddly familiar.
"I don't know."
"It's your head, Ginny. Your dream. You tell me." Ron pauses. "You're going to wake up soon." Then he steps back and lets go of her hands, half-smiling and breaking her heart. "You're the queen of hearts, Ginny- trust that, above all else- and you're no-one's canvas."
Then he kisses her forehead, and he's gone. And, stupidly, Ginny remembers where she's seen those wings before. The year after the end of the war, twelve months to the day exactly after Ron's death, Hermione finished a mural on the wall of the Great Hall. It was a vivid chaos of images and colours, a kind of memorial, although Hermione had refused to call it that. And Draco, who had written the accompanying poem, had agreed- this was before, when he and Hermione had formed an uneasy sort of truce, a time that seems to Ginny like three eternities past, now. So they'd called it "not yet lost," and they hadn't let anyone enchant it to move, and Ginny was glad of that, then, because it made it somehow less real. She is still glad of it, now, although her reasons have changed.
In the top left corner of the mural, Hermione painted Ron as a kind of avenging angel of fire. This is truthful, in both the figurative and the literal sense. "The firebringing spell is complex, and it requires a great deal of power and skill in controlling and channeling wild magic," Dumbledore had told them the year he taught sixth and seventh year Defense against the Dark Arts classes combined, "but that is not the reason it is so rarely used. It also requires extraordinary bravery, and absolute loyalty, absolute love. To possess all of these things is an incredible gift, and a doom." Ginny doesn't know, even now, if he knew then how loud and long and far and deep the echoes of those words would be. She doesn't know if Ron was even paying attention that day, and she doesn't know if Dumbledore was looking at him when he spoke, although she thinks it's more than likely. It is equally terrifying to her that he might not have known.
(wake up)
Absolute love, and absolute loyalty. Ginny still can't see Ron as a hero, because he's the youngest of her brothers, funny and kind and fiercely protective, and he's not perfect, never was, and he's someone she's loved, and more And all of this means that he is not, to her, just the boy who stood at the top of the hill and made of himself a burning brand of hopeless, desperate courage. And although she can't forget the raining fire that set the trees alight for miles in each direction, or the scorched bare earth on the crown of the hill, afterwards, she also can't reduce him to an elegant empty epitaph. It terrifies her that he could have chosen their lives over his own, even if since then they have called him a hero, saying that the storm of power he released was the turning of the tides, beyond all hope.
(Even when Ginny imagines how things could have ended, she still wishes her brother hadn't climbed that hill, no matter the cost. There are not many people that she can explain this to now, not many who could understand.)
Which is why Ginny is glad that the painting cannot move. It's not a living thing, that image, but a captive snapshot memory of fire and wings. Ginny wonders if Hermione still remembers him like this, all in sunset glory. She thinks the answer is probably no. Hermione has painted Ron too many times in blue and gold to be deceived into thinking red is the right colour. Ginny thinks she could probably explain to Hermione why she wishes her brother was no hero, what she would have given for that one small thing.
((This is what matters. There are other things, as well, all tied up in knots of love and loyalty; Ginny loved her brother one way, and after she was finished thinking she was in love with Harry, she discovered that she loved him that way as well. Ginny has five brothers (had six brothers) and she knows how she loves her brothers. She has never had a sister, though, and for a long time she thought that was the reason she couldn't love Hermione as she loves her brothers. But Ginny isn't blind, least of all when she's looking in the mirror. It didn't take long to know that Hermione was not her sister, in any sense of the word- but there are other kinds of love, more dangerous. And then, almost before Ginny had discovered her mistake, she saw the way Ron looked at the brown-eyed girl who was not his sister, and suddenly there was a question of loyalty and a choice to make. So Ginny chose, and in one way it was impossible, but in other ways it was not even a choice at all. Absolute love and absolute loyalty are things that Ginny knows, as well as her brother knew them.
This is why she knows that Hermione would understand, if she were to explain that, for her, both possible endings of that night on the hill were equally hellish. Tom Riddle, and Ron. No Riddle, no Ron. Love has little time for reason; love will make you understand that given a choice between a dark world lit by a sudden shining of blue and gold, and a world of light without those colours, you would choose the darkness every time. And Ginny knows that Hermione, too, would have chosen darkness, if it had meant that coloured brightness could go on shining. Ginny made another choice a long long time ago, that Hermione never knew about, that even Ron never had a chance to guess- but that choice was made for love and loyalty, and for loyalty over love. So Hermione, like Ginny (and yet not like, Ginny thinks ruefully) Hermione loved the burning boy before he burned. And this is what matters.))
(wake up)
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not the end yet. chapter five soon (i'm sure you're all holding your breath)