After a while his legs started going to sleep so she shifted off of his lap and sat beside him, using his shoulder as a headrest.
"You know," she said after a while, "I realize they've given you no reason to disappoint them, but isn't living up to their expectations letting them win?"
"What do you mean?" he asked a bit stiffly.
"Well, it's just that if you behave cruelly because that's how they think you should and will behave, you're letting them make you something you are not. You are letting them determine who you will be."
"So you're saying I should be nice to them?" his voice held disbelief and disgust.
"No! I'm not saying you should be anything. I'm just saying that you would probably find life easier if you would ignore them entirely and be who you want to be. Cruel, indifferent, kind, whatever. It just sounds like you're letting them make that decision for you." She felt him shift beneath her.
He let out a sigh. "I've never really cared one way or the other. Never saw the point of wanting to be anything since the choice was never mine."
"But it is yours. Who cares what your father thinks? Who cares what my brother thinks? Follow your father and half the world will want you dead. Follow Dumbledore and the other half will. I say screw them all and follow yourself. Let them think what they want." She shrugged. "If they're working toward the same end you are, they might come in handy. If they aren't, well, find a way around them. They're always going to come to their own conclusion about you, and, believe it or not, sometimes that can be used to your advantage."
He didn't say anything at first. "So, is this attitude of yours what landed you here?" He regretted the question as soon as he asked it. She was here for completely different reasons than he was and he knew that.
She pulled away from him and stood up. "No. That attitude of mine is what has kept me from going further, from running away from this place, from my family, from life." The pain in her voice broke his heart again.
He stood and put his hands on her shoulders. Speaking softly, he said, "I'm sorry, Gin. I shouldn't've said that. I knew better. I'm sorry."
She turned around. "I know. It's just that…at first, after…all of it happened, they told me it wasn't my fault. They told me everything was okay. They told me a lot of things and they expected me to go back to who I was. No one thought for a moment that he might have left his mark on my soul forever. No one considered that I might be a little different, a little darker, that I might have grown up a lot more than I should have that year. No one understood that I wasn't innocent anymore.
"They all still expect me to be sunny cheery happy Ginny. They all still expect me to dance and play and be the innocent little girl. They all expect me to be the opposite of what they expect of you. For a while I did the same thing you do; I was what they wanted because that's what they wanted, because they wouldn't believe the truth and if they did it would only scare them. It took me over a year to figure out who I was and who I wanted to be. I still let them think I'm that little girl, for the most part, but not for the same reasons. I say the things I say and do the things I do because I want to. I don't correct them because there is no point. When they see something they don't expect or don't like sometimes I explain, if their reaction is inconvenient or too annoying, but mostly I just shrug it off and leave them to think what they want.
"It hurts that my family doesn't know me. It hurts that they don't even try to. It hurts that I can't shove it in their face and make them see, but I can't because I still love them and doing that would only hurt them," there were tears in her eyes. "I've made my decision. I've decided what's important to me. Living up to my own ideals is first. Protecting my family is second. Being seen and appreciated for who I am…I don't even know if that's on the list anymore." Her voice dropped so low he wasn't sure he heard correctly, but it sounded like she added, "I'm not even sure it's possible."
Her voice regained its strength and she ended her speech with, "I'm still here because I still have a hard time separating what I want and what he wants, nothing else."
He ran his fingers through his hair. "Well, that makes me feel like a child."
She got a really concerned and apologetic look on her face. She opened her mouth to say something, but he interrupted her.
"No! Don't apologize. I know you didn't mean to make me feel that way, but I do. You dealt with everything I'm going through when you were 12. I'm sixteen and still can't deal with it on my own." He leaned up against the sinks and lowered his head.
"Stop it!" she scolded him. "Having everyone expect you to be good is one thing. Having everyone expect you to be evil is another. I grew up with in a very loving home where I was taken care of and wanted. I can't imagine what it would be like to grow as nothing other than an heir, someone to carry on the family name and uphold the family honour. I can't imagine having your father. I did not go through what you are going through when I was 12. There are similarities, sure, but that doesn't mean it was just as hard."
He looked surprised at the energy with which she spoke. "Are you mad at me?"
"For calling yourself a child, yes! I don't care how long ago you should have dealt with this, but beating yourself up about it now isn't going to do you any good. Learn from your past, don't let it make the future any harder than it already has."
He nodded slowly. She sighed and leaned up against the sink next to him, but as soon as she did so, she stood up, walked around him, and leaned against the sink on the other side of him.
He looked at her curiously.
"What?" she asked self-consciously.
"Why'd you move?"
She looked a little guilty. "Um, well, I don't really like that sink." He looked at her questioningly again. "It kind of moves, disappears and exposes a rather large tunnel behind it."
His eyebrows shot up. "That's…"
She nodded. He looked over at the sink next to him thoughtfully. "Hm. Never woulda guessed."
After a few moments of staring at the sink, he spoke, startling Ginny out of her own reverie. "I'll make a deal with you."
"What kind of deal?" she asked encouragingly.
He turned to face her. "I'll figure out who I am, who I want to be if you'll be here to keep me sane."
She smiled. "I guess we figured out what we do now."
He nodded solemnly. As a rule, he had avoided self-exploration over the years. Now he was going to dive in head first.