Seduction Breeds

by Nina

Disclaimer: If I owned Harry Potter I would be busy accidentally spilling plot secrets to my fans.
Dedication: This goes to Cassie, who let me borrow her Shakespeare muse. She also read it first and is my best friend and occasional worst enemy. Cassie, this is for you.
Beta: Sioniann. Love to you.

Ron hurried down the stairs to find the kitchen empty save for his sister, who was busy tucking into her breakfast. Through a mouthful of pancake she told him 'good morning' and gestured for him to join her.

"'Morning," he said, taking a bite of his breakfast. Ginny smiled and returned to her own meal. Surreptitiously, Ron looked up at her. She was shining and glowing like a waning moon, chewing on her lip and staring pensively into her coffee. Ron carefully noted that she looked tired, yet beautifully so; delicate, pale, freckled.

"Ron. Ron, you're buttering your hand." Ginny put her coffee down to giggle at him. "Something on your mind?"

"No," he said, still staring at her, wiping his hand. He was now taking her curves in, analyzing every hill of her body. Her scent was flowery, a bit of what he had smelled once in Potions over a cauldron filled with something that had a name he couldn't quite pronounce. Immediately he made himself stop thinking about her, feelingabsolutely nauseated that he had been thinking about his sister in that way. He focused all his attention on buttering his toast correctly.

"Okay," she said, her voice constricted and small, as if coming from the bottom of a very narrow well.

There seemed to be no rift in time between the moment she was looking away to the moment she was in his arms and crying into his chest. Her hands, long and delicate, were gripping his back, pulling at his shirt, while she let out a long, inhuman cry. Ron was cradling her against his body, and could feel the vibrations of her moans all the way inside of himself.

"I wish I hadn't agreed with him," she mumbled into her brother's shirt.

"What do you—agreed with who about what?" Ron held her at arms' length, the girl a blibbering, red mess.

"With Harry!" Ginny wiped her eyes and let her arms fall limply to Ron's legs. "He said that You-Know-Who would find out about the two of us and use it to his advantage, and that we couldn't be together," she cried into his shirt again, heaving great sobs against his ribcage.

Ron's emotions were conflicted. In saving her life, the person his sister loved had broken her like a hapless child would a china doll—yet he couldn't help feeling a slight twinge of happiness. Ginny's hands were finding their way to his neck.

"Wouldn't you rather be living? You two could get together after all this is over," and though he didn't know why, he felt strangely bitter while saying it. Ginny's hands dropped once more when Ron wiped away a few tears that had been dripping down her face like rain on a window. Another tear curved as it fell over her chin.

Ginny gathered herself and unfolded from Ron's lap, clearing away both of their breakfasts so quickly Ron had no time to admire her movement as she did so. His stomach jolted uneasily. What are you thinking? He asked himself darkly. That's your bleeding sister! Bloody hell! Think about something else… Chudley Cannons. Chudley Cannons. Chudley. Cannons.

"I'll be upstairs," murmured Ginny, mainly to herself, maybe to tell herself that was really where she'd be.

Ron shut his eyes forcefully. Chudley Cannons.

Hermione returned three hours after she had left, appearing against the orange walls, empty-handed and downtrodden. Ron looked up from Quidditch Through the Ages to see her massaging her temples and coming to sit beside him.

"Did you find anything?" he inquired, closing the book to look at her. In the afternoon light she appeared gray and harassed, her lips chapped and hair disheveled.

"No, even Dark books deem Horcruxes as taboo—but it's a fine way you're helping," Hermione snapped. "Why haven't you been looking for things?"

"Right, because my house is filled with books on Dark magic," Ron intoned darkly, "oh, wait. I haven't checked Percy's old room yet…"

"Honestly, Ron. You could have started packing or getting things out of the way for when we go off with Harry." Hermione pushed a lock of hair behind her ear and pulled both of her legs on the bed. "But I do think I've found something important."

From her pocket she pulled a large, golden locket, intricate markings around the edges and a large 'S' on the front. One of the hinges was broken, and it had a large crack down the middle, as if a little earthquake had torn it apart. Hermione dropped it into Ron's palm and he examined it for a moment, his eyes growing wide.

"Bloody hell! This is—Hermione, you've found the locket!"

Beaming, Hermione nodded. "I found it wedged between two books in the library… I was thinking— the initials on the note Harry found were 'R.A.B.', right? Sirius' brother's name was Regulus Black. If his middle name began with an 'A', we may have found our man." She appeared pleased with herself and took the locket back, dropping it in the pocket of her jeans.

"But wasn't Regulus a Death Eater? I mean, why would he want to go against You-Know-Who?" For once, Hermione didn't try and force Ron into saying the Dark Lord's name, but rushed breathlessly into her rebuttal.

"He was killed though, wasn't he? Maybe Voldemort killed him because he destroyed the Horcrux," Hermione concluded, folding her hands in her lap.

"Yeah, maybe…" Ron trailed into ellipsis as if he was weighing the situation, but instead his eyes fell upon her lips. Slowly, he bridged the gap between them and closed his mouth upon hers, the two of them entwined for seconds that lasted longer than they should. Red hair was swaying in the sun, pink lips were pouting, for a moment, Hermione wasn't Hermione, and Ron didn't mind.

Hermione broke from Ron and stared dubiously at him.

"I am sitting here explaining to you what could be the fate of the Wizarding World, and all you can think of is kissing me?"

"Didn't you—didn't you like it?" mumbled Ron (his ears were now so red it looked as if he were in unbearable pain.)

"I… Ron, I did." To his astonishment her eyes were slowly filling up with tears, and every time she blinked they fell and made trails down her skin. "But this isn't the time to be getting close. I don't think we should talk about this again." She got up from the bed and trudged toward the door. Ron had the impulse to go after her, but stayed where he was, watching long after the moment she had left the room, her presence still strong on the air—books, dust, and an unusual perfume.

In the days following, Hermione slept in Ginny's room as if it had been a violent attack and not a kiss, and Ron could hear them giggling through the walls and was instantly jealous, all parts of him tingling with want. Maybe if he hadn't been so stupid, one of them would be his. He ran through hundreds of 'what ifs' and 'maybes', each resolution so much better than the last, until he had dashed all hope of looking for any bright side.

Ron noticed that when going down the narrow staircase, Ginny would brush against him and her scent—flowers and cinnamon—seemed to melt into him until all he could think about was her and the secret things she must wonder to herself before falling asleep (the things that follow her to her dreams and remain only as a blush on her cheeks by morning).

"I'm on duty now, and your father won't be home until late tonight, so do be careful," Mrs. Weasley implored of her children and Hermione, hugging the three in turn before turning to leave. Once her absence had been established for a few moments, Hermione decided to go and look in other rooms at Grimmauld Place ("you never know what you might find, I could have missed things, you know…"), leaving Ron and Ginny alone.

It was in those moments that Ron thought about leaving, not able to see his sister anymore, cut off from news of the family. Ginny swung her long hair behind her and bit down on her lip, staring out the window with a hand on her hip, and Ron was painfully reminded that this was his sister. Lovely, yes. Kind, yes. But family, a terrain so dangerously unmentionable that it seemed to be hardly worth it. Your effing sister. Stop thinking, you unhinged git!

"Want to play chess?" Ron asked his sister, gesturing towards the chessboard that was still resting where it had been left the week before. Ginny seemed to consider the offer, eventually taking a seat and arranging her chessmen on each square. When the board was set up, they hesitated, hanging on to the moment where they didn't have to do anything for as long as they could.

"White moves first," Ron began gradually, "so it's your move."

Ginny studied the board, every piece in its place. Her face was flushed and she didn't move, but looked up instead. "I don't want you to leave."

Ron was dumbstruck, his mouth slightly open. "What?"

"I don't want you to go and die! You have to let me come, I don't want to go anywhere without you, Mum and Dad can't make me go back to Hogwarts, they can't!" She was in hysterics, her face contorted and red. Ron groaned softly.

"I have to do this, Gin. I can't desert my friends like that. It's not something I want to do, I mean, no one wants to. But it's something I have to do, you know."

Ginny nodded imperceptibly and her throat tensed. She took her queen and pushed it forward, moving other pieces out of the way (a few of them trying to hit at Ginny's hand) until it had knocked Ron's king off the board.

"What was that? Your move was completely illegal! You can't jump with your queen or take that many men—"

"You said," his sister was advancing on him now, "that the object of the game was to take the king. I took the king."

"But you're supposed to play to get there!" spluttered Ron, "your move is not allowed."

"I don't want to play to get there."


A/N: Cliffhanger. Yet again, love to my beta, Sioniann. Look at her things on livejournal. They will amaze you and make you cry. Crazy good.